A Business Point of View

Canada’s Only Manufacturer of Parking Meters is in Nova Scotia

Virtually everyone with a driver’s license has used parking meters at one time or the other. Parking meters are ubiquitous with urban living and provide municipalities with significant revenues to help fund the services they provide their residents. Parking meters have become increasingly sophisticated, particularly over the last decade or so, moving from the traditional coin operated meters to today’s smart meters driven by specialized parking apps.

It is unlikely that you would have ever heard of MacKay Meters of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. I didn’t until we recently did an Insights Podcast with their third generation President, James MacKay. But MacKay Meters has been around for sixty-five years after having been founded by J.J.MacKay in 1960 and is the only Canadian manufacturer of parking meters. Today, its products can be found in forty countries around the world and most of the products the company manufactures in Nova Scotia are exported to other markets elsewhere.

History of MacKay Meters

MacKay Meters was established in 1960 and initially entered the parking meter business by acquiring the Canadian rights to manufacture and distribute meters developed by other countries before deciding in1987 to develop and manufacture their own products, beginning with the traditional coin operated mechanical parking meter. The company’s reputation was built on the durability and reliability of its products to withstand harsh weather conditions like those found in Canada.

Originally founded by J.J. MacKay, the company was led by his son George after his sudden death for forty years until his son James assume the leadership of the company in 2023 after serving the company as Vice-President of Sales. James is credited in developing the company’s more innovative products. It should be noted that George MacKay had travelled to Europe to study clockmaking as a means to improve the company’s mechanical products.

In the 1980s, MacKay introduced electronic meters, becoming one of the early adopters of this new technology in the industry. The company evolve into developing smart meters that used credit cards and mobile apps (including HotSpotMobile, a company based in Fredericton). The company even has its own parking app called Nova Pay. Perhaps more importantly, the company began to provide centralized management systems for municipalities, providing their customers with real-time data access, maintenance, analytics and remote meter configuration. Indeed, there are years where subscription revenue from these managed software systems exceeds the revenue from the production of the actual equipment due to variation in market demand from year to year. The company currently has about 50,000 meters under management.

The company has offices in Quebec and Ontario, as well as in Florida and in San Francisco to serve the US market.

World’s Biggest Parking Meter Project

MacKay Meters is just wrapping up the biggest parking meter renewal project in the world that began in 2022. Over the past couple of years, the company has installed nearly 13,000 of its smart meters and 3,000 of its pay stations in San Francisco. MacKay sells one of its typical pay stations for about $8,000 per unit, while its smart meters sell between $800 and $900 per unit. All these units were manufactured at their 36,000 square foot plant in New Glasgow. Conservatively, this project was worth over $30 million to MacKay and represents important export revenues for Nova Scotia.

The Evolving Sophistication of Smart Meters

Over its history, MacKay has been an innovative company. The company has a fully staffed research and development office in Halifax. The company’s products are also ISO certified. Its coin validation equipment is considered the best in the industry and coin operated parking meters are still widely used in less developed countries like Mexico and Africa and smaller communities across North America. MacKay was the first company to introduce the use of e-purse cards to pay for parking. Their smart meters and pay stations can be solar powered and their sophisticated software programs can provide rate management in real time that allows municipalities to increase parking rates during special events or time of day. MacKay’s smart meters have a modular design that allows customers to easily update their meters without needing to replace them. Today, 90 percent of the meters MacKay manufactures are smart meters.

Advantages of Manufacturing in Nova Scotia

In a recent Insights Podcast, James MacKay was quick to say that people were the key to the company’s success and that the company’s products reflect the quality of people working for the company. Automation has helped to bring efficiencies to MacKay’s manufacturing processes, and the company now has as many people working on the software development and management side of the business as on the manufacturing side. According to MacKay, recruitment and retention of employees has not been an issue as a result of the company’s employee management practices.

Looking Ahead

As a leader in smart technology for parking meters, MacKay Meters is well positioned for continued success. As James MacKay states, “As we look to the future, MacKay is committed to driving innovation in smart parking technologies while staying true to our legacy of reliability and service. With growing demand for integrated, sustainable urban mobility solutions, we are well-positioned to lead the way in transforming how cities manage and experience parking." His company’s adoption of managed software support systems is an important market differentiation, and its ongoing R&D work keeps the company at the forefront of innovation in the industry.

MacKay has a quiet confidence for the future of his company, a company that has demonstrated that you can manufacture world class products within Atlantic Canada and compete successfully with the world. The success of MacKay Meters serves for an inspiration for others in the region.