History

Black Cat Wear Parts began manufacturing cutting edges in Edmonton, Alberta in 1968. In the following decade as machine size and horsepower increased, Black Cat invested heavily in the latest technology and equipment to produce higher quality, harder, tougher “Through Hardened” edges. Many other manufacturers during that time were clinging to the older technology, making their carbon edges thicker to compensate for the lack of toughness. That dedication to being an industry leader fueled the company’s growth and continues today. Black Cat Wear Parts now operates multiple production facilities in North America and China, distributing their industry leading products worldwide.

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada is the location of the corporate head office as well as a 36,000 square foot manufacturing facility and a 24,000 square foot warehouse and distribution facility. The Edmonton manufacturing facility is mainly responsible for processing heavy construction blades for bull dozers, loaders, excavators and scrapers. The wide variety of parts and lower run quantities of these parts dictates a flexible manufacturing system that is able to process order quantities from 1 to 10 efficiently. Larger run quantities, although less frequent, are also easily processed.

Two additional production facilities are located in Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada. The largest facility is 29,000 square feet and is located on Railway Street adjacent to the Gerdau Ameristeel steel mill. The original 12,000 square foot Selkirk plant is located four kilometers away on Main Street. These two plants concentrate on higher volume construction machinery cutting edges including grader blades, snow plow blades and carbide insert blades.

In 2003 Black Cat began to develop an offering of complementary cast wear parts to offer a broader range of parts for their distributors. Investing heavily in research and development, design, and quality assurance, the company is determined to develop a “first-tier” product offering. The range of these parts grew quickly and now includes a large variety of bucket teeth and adapters, ripper teeth, bucket lip and sidebar protection items, bull dozer end bits, half arrow shaped blades and segments, and numerous other complimentary wear parts for a broad range of applications.

In 2008 Black Cat opened its newest production facility, a wholly owned enterprise with approximately 55,000 square feet of manufacturing space located in Su Zhou, Jin Jia Ba, China. The factory is adjacent to the steel mill that produces the feed steel used in production. In 2012 Black Cat commissioned a 110,000 sq/ft state of the art foundry that now produces a wide range of world class products. Two hours by truck to the Shanghai Port, the China facility offers a competitive source of grader blades and other cutting edges as well as an inspection and packaging capability for castings. The ability to consolidate these product lines provides Black Cat distributors with a much broader range of products from a single source with a significant freight advantage to many destinations.