MBRP gets $1.49M Ontario trade fund to reshore exhaust tip manufacturing from China, add 18 jobs

MBRP, a Huntsville, Ontario-based automotive aftermarket parts manufacturer, has secured CAD $1.49 million from the Ontario Together Trade Fund to reshore exhaust tip production from China and expand domestic manufacturing capacity. The project, which represents a total investment of CAD $2.98 million, will fund a new line of truck accessories, insource flat-cut and bent component manufacturing, and upgrade production infrastructure. The initiative is expected to create 18 new jobs and protect 125 existing positions, according to a government release. MBRP Chief Operations Officer Joshua Barkey emphasized that the real investment is in people, enabling employees to build careers in Muskoka while strengthening local manufacturing.

This news sits at the intersection of trade-policy response and automotive aftermarket production, a vertical that has traditionally relied on low-cost overseas supply chains for aesthetic components like exhaust tips. The reshoring narrative matters here not because MBRP is an AM company—it is not—but because the Ontario Together Trade Fund explicitly funds equipment upgrades and process modernization. For the AM industry, this creates a potential pull-through effect: as small-to-mid-size auto parts shops bring production back from China, they often encounter the same tooling cost, lead time, and inventory flexibility problems that AM solves in industrial-tooling and low-volume production contexts. The automotive vertical, while selective about serial-part AM adoption, has always been a strong consumer of AM tooling, jigs, and indirect manufacturing aids. A wave of reshoring capital flowing to tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers could accelerate qualification of 3D-printed production aids and, in some cases, end-use metal parts for the aftermarket.

From a practical standpoint, AM remains absent from the announced equipment mix at MBRP—the company is reinvesting in conventional metal forming, cutting, and welding capabilities for exhaust tips and truck accessories. The editorial significance for an AM audience is indirect but real: public subsidy programs for trade-affected manufacturers are expanding, and AM vendors should be mapping these funds onto their sales playbooks. The Ontario Together Trade Fund has received overwhelming demand and been topped up to CAD $150 million over three years, meaning dozens of similar projects are in motion across Ontario. For AM service bureaus and equipment OEMs, the concrete next step is to target these trade-impacted manufacturers with ROI models for production tooling, prototype parts, and low-volume end-use components—before conventional equipment spending locks them into legacy processes again.