Protocase Management Team (left to right), Co-Founder Doug Milburn, COO Mike Pearson, Co-founder Steve Lilley on the Protocase manufacturing floor in Sydney, Nova Scotia.

A Canadian-based aerospace firm chose Wilmington for its U.S. expansion and plans to bring in hundreds of jobs.

Protocase, founded in 2000 by Doug Milburn and Steve Lilley, is a global manufacturing firm that serves the aerospace industry and other sectors, and 45Drives, a leading open-source data storage company for enterprise and small and mid-sized businesses, will start moving employees into their downtown offices this summer.

Protocase has its headquarters in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and creates custom electronic enclosures, sheet metal and Computer Numerical Control machining for scientists, engineers and innovators.

"We're the world leader in mass customization in metal in the areas that we work in," Milburn said. The company's work started off as electronic enclosures, moved into parts for innovations, and Milburn said the aerospace industry started coming to the company around 2005 due to the company's ability to build efficiently.

"We will build in two to three days in an industry that two or three weeks are exciting," Milburn said. "If you build in aerospace, you know 10-20 weeks is quite ordinary for lead time."

Milburn said the company has also sold to Google, Apple, Microsoft and universities.

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45Drives is what Milburn describes as the enterprise data storage and virtual computing division. The company can create, run and deploy computer machines through their software and has large standalone data servers that are up to 60 hard drives.

The company is also a leader in open-source clustered storage ties in multiple large servers so that if one fails, the others don't skip a beat, Milburn said.

Milburn said the company's competitors are legacy providers such as IBM, Dell and HP Enterprise, but 45Drives does it differently because their mass customization allows flexibility to click pieces together to create exactly what the customer wants instead of using only specific products.

SnapShield, one of 45Drives' software solutions that is gaining traction among government institutions and mid-sized municipalities such as Wilmington, stops ransomware attacks.

Milburn said Wilmington was the perfect fit for the companies' U.S. expansion due to its culture and lifestyle, which has a lot of parallels to Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Aside from the lifestyle and the beach, the higher education institutions such as the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Cape Fear Community College, as well the city's close proximity to the military base in Jacksonville, were also attractive factors to the companies' expansion.

Milburn said his companies look to attitude and aptitude when hiring employees. It's not so much about experience for him, as he said the importance of a strong work ethic.

In five years, Protocase and 45Drives plan to have full-on manufacturing in Wilmington, but this summer the companies will start to hire locally to help fill corporate and administrative support roles. In total, Milburn said the companies plan to hire 400 employees.

Milburn said both companies have created a workplace that has a fun, engaged environment where employees want to be there and enjoy what they do, but also hold each other accountable.

The culture at Protocase and 45Drives is one where Milburn said everyone has a team mentality instead of an "us versus them" mentality.

The companies are looking for those who might come out of a military background or community college background and have exceptional attitude and aptitude and are ready to work, but might not have years of experience at an engineering firm.

"These guys have an ability to assess your aptitude and kind of crunch a person through their process because you level up one skill at a time," said Jon Phillips of PhillComm Global, a public relations firm.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Protocase and 45Drives expand in Wilmington, NC

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Global aerospace firm and data storage company to bring hundreds of jobs to Wilmington - AOL