Mission Statement

"Partner with our family of employees, customers, dealers, and suppliers providing quality products and solutions, to ensure our mutual growth and profitability, and build on our dominant national distribution network in the Canadian industrial and construction related markets."

Corporate History

In 1945 our founder, Robert Napier, started a shipping room equipment & supply business.  In 1947, he purchased General Shipping Equipment Limited, a small Ontario distributor of Diagraph Bradley products for sale in Ontario and Quebec.

In the early fifties, the Senco Products line was acquired along with other staple manufacturers' products.  Senco was the first developer of a successful pneumatic stapler for use in the automotive industry.  Senco products were offered mainly to the furniture and automotive industries at the that time along with packaging staples by Markwell and International Stapling Machine Company.

In 1957, sales were projected to the $250,000-a-year level.  With this growth, General Shipping Equipment operated from a 4,000 sq. ft. building in Toronto and a smaller office in Montreal.

The Expansion Years
By 1963, sales were approximately $750,000, allowing for an extension of facilities in Montreal and the opening of an office in Winnipeg.  Later a more substantial building was purchased in Rexdale, a suburb of Toronto, and the Western distributor of Senco Products in Vancouver, I.H. Caswell & Co. Ltd., was purchased.

The year 1966 was a milestone in the history of the company as the first million dollars in sales was achieved by General Shipping Equipment Ltd. and an office was opened in Calgary, Alberta.  National growth was our objective and in the early seventies offices were opened in Edmonton, Alberta, Moncton, New Brunswick, and Quebec, P.Q.

1976 -- A Banner Year! Sales of 1 Million Dollars Achieved in one month!
A sales and service centre was opened in Waterloo, Ontario, and in Penticton, B.C.

In addition to Senco products, throughout all of their years in business, General Shipping Equipment had sold a wide range of production and packaging equipment and several lines of specialty products.

A New Company Emerges
The continued expansion of office and warehouse facilities across Canada during the early eighties put the Company in a position to serve customers from local warehouses across the country. General Shipping Equipment Limited and I.H. Caswell & Co. Ltd. joined together and became Canadian Industrial Distributors Inc. in 1986.

An office was opened in Dartmouth/Halifax, Nova Scotia in the same year and in October we moved into a new 22,000 sq. ft. building in Toronto which had been specifically constructed to house the Corporate and Toronto regional office.  In 1987 our Penticton office was moved to a new facility in Kelowna, B.C.

A New Leadership for the New Millennium
1996 -- Our 50th year in Business
The company was sold to a partnership of managers who represent many years of experience in our business.  Our objective today is to continue to grow and prosper in alliance with our employees, customers, and suppliers.

By leveraging technology, transferring resources from administration to marketing and sales, our goal is to further develop the new Canadian Industrial Distributors Inc. into a new more customer focused organization.

Our corporate office is an active member of The Brampton Board of Trade

We are a proud member of  The Specialty Tool And Fastener Distributor Association for over 30 years.

We are a long term member of the  Canadian Federation of Independent Business 

We are proudly a member of the AFFLINK association, an organization that enables us to provide the tools and resources necessary to satisfy our customer needs at an international, national and local level. 

Indica is a Buying Group focused on generating volume rebates for Industrial Supply Distributors while increasing Market Share for our valued Supplier partners. We are proudly a member  Indica. 

The  Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC)
L'Association des commissions des accidents du travail du Canada (ACATC)