I bring tidings and greetings from beautiful, sunny Windsor. I'm from the Canadian Association of Moldmakers. Thank you for the opportunity today to be able to speak on behalf of our association to all of you. It's quite the honour to be able to weigh in on the free trade agreements and we appreciate the opportunity.
Most people don't know what a mould is or how important it is to the manufacturing industry, so if you don't mind, I'll take a few minutes to give you a brief overview of what mould-making is and how important it is to Canada.
The mould-making industry in Canada is approximately $2 billion in GDP. It's highly concentrated between Toronto and Windsor, with about 80% of our members being in that region, in that corridor. We have about 170 individual shops, which means we're quite clustered, but we're also fragmented, which is good and bad. Our average shop has about 60 employees. There are 11,000 employees directly related to the mould-making industry. It is heavily dependent on the automotive industry; about 70% of what we make lands in the automotive industry. The group is part of a larger group of about 1,400 companies. Basically, the entire infrastructure is about 1,400 companies and about $25 billion in GDP. That's what we service just in Canada.
What we've been able to establish is that there's no manufacturing industry in the world that does not have a mould-making industry, primarily because everything you touch—and I assume you've all touched something plastic today—has the mould-making industry affiliated or associated with it. That's why we're so heavily sought after. We're very highly technical, and not necessarily expensive but not easily replaceable because of the experience that it requires.
We've been in the industry for about 70 years in Canada. During those 70 years, we have grown into super shops and small shops, so it's very dynamic but a very large part of the manufacturing community.
I'll let Tim explain to you briefly what a mould is, because I assume most of you have neither experienced nor been in the mould industry.