Bristol Aerospace - Facilities

Winnipeg Plant

Bristol Aerospace Limited operates its 700,000 square foot plant and aircraft hangars in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the geographic centre of North America. The main plant is located directly adjacent to the Winnipeg International Airport.

Bristol also operates a stand-alone Composite Manufacturing Centre in Winnipeg and the Rockwood Propellant Plant, located 30 kilometres north of Winnipeg.
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In addition, Bristol maintains an engineering office in Ottawa that supports the company's space business and provides ready access to facilities at the Canadian Space Agency's David Florida Laboratory.
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Rockwood Propellant Plant

Bristol Aerospace owns and operates Canada's only large-scale composite propellant manufacturing and test facility. The Rockwood plant is located on a 1,200 hectare site north of Winnipeg. Since it opened in 1963, the plant has processed over 4 million kilograms of composite solid propellants for various rocket motor applications. These applications include approximately 20,000 JATOs, 650 Mets rockets, 1,000 Black Brants, 1,000 Drone Boosters, and over 800,000 CRV7s.

Since 1962 Bristol has manufactured and cast composite propellant for use in Bristol's Black Brant sounding rockets, booster motors, and the CRV7 rocket system. Composite propellant delivers superior energy as a function of its weight, and remains stable through extreme storage conditions - for the customer this means unrivaled performance and exceptional safety.

Rockwood has the capacity to process over 900,000 kilograms of composite propellant per year.

Bristol's experience in propellant binder systems includes polystyrene, CTPB, polyurethane, aluminized HTPB, and non-aluminized (reduced smoke), HTPB and ammonium nitrate with energetic binders.

The Rockwood propellant plant is a fully integrated rocket motor manufacturing facility. All operations from motor case insulation through final assembly and packaging are performed at the plant site.

Composite Manufacturing Centre

Bristol Aerospace's Composite Manufacturing Centre is a self-contained, state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the fabrication of composite products. The 71,600 square foot facility has a proven capability to supply quality products in the aerospace industry.

Every step in the manufacturing process is held to the strictest quality control procedures - ISO 9001 and Boeing's D1-9000/A.

Ottawa Engineering Office

Since 2000, Bristol Aerospace has operated an engineering office in Ottawa in support of the company's space business. The office is responsible for the development of Spacecraft Attitude and Orbit Determination and Control Systems (AODCS) and the conduct of space mission concept studies. In addition, Ottawa based staff support spacecraft assembly integration and test activities that occur at that Canadian Space Agency operated David Florida Laboratory which offers a complete range of spacecraft integration and environmental test facilities.