Focusing on growth and customer service, Creation Technologies continues to thrive under a new CEO
For OEMs looking for end-to-end solutions, including expert design, manufacturing, supply chain, order fulfilment, and aftermarket support, Creation Technologies (Creation) stands ready to offer global, world-class services. As a global specialty electronic manufacturing services (EMS) provider, Creation forms strategic partnerships with clients in the aerospace and defense, medical, and tech industrial sectors.
Manufacturing Today last reported on the business in 2024, and in that interview, the then Chief Financial Officer Patrick Freytag discussed the business’ impressive growth trajectory and successful wins. After completing a planned CEO transition, with Patrick now in the CEO chair, it is an ideal time to revisit the Boston-headquartered manufacturer for an update. 
“I have been CEO for just over 100 days, but I am not new to Creation as I joined in 2019,” Patrick begins. “Taking over the helm of the business at this point in our journey is a real thrill and privilege, as I have been here as we built the strategy, completed the three acquisitions, upgraded the talent across the organization and narrowed our customer focus.
“We remain solely focused on the niche where we operate and I am not looking to introduce big changes. Situationally I’m a different person, so there will be some distinctions, but we’ve come through a tumultuous period of big global market shocks. We navigated those incredibly well and they have created opportunities for us, which we need to convert into growth.”
Maintaining the business’ trajectory on this path requires the continued efforts of over 3000 employees, divided across 13 manufacturing facilities, a design center, a rapid prototyping center, and global materials sourcing groups. In May 2025, Creation celebrated a 40 percent expansion of its Denver Product Realization Center, which increases the facility’s footprint to 45,000 square feet. This enlargement helps Creation work with more customers looking for early-stage design and development efforts as Patrick explains. “Denver is an end-to-end specialty center, which focuses on New Product Introduction (NPI) and working with customers on short-run manufacturing. We’ve got several engineers focusing on test development and helping our customers get to market quickly.
“This facility came to us via acquisition and three years ago we were looking at ensuring it added value for customers. We were seeing a tremendous amount of demand for short run, product realization, test development and NPI capabilities, and so we centralized those services to Denver, and have seen great interest. That site has more than doubled from a revenue perspective in the last three years.”
The specifically targeted equipment available at Denver is a major contributor to the success of the site, and Patrick noted that being strategic with technology has been a focus for Creation overall. “By no means do we have a single manufacturer of SMT equipment across every one of our facilities, but we’ve made an effort that, in each facility, we do have a single manufacturer,” he explains. “This gives us the ability to move jobs between different lines with common trolleys, loaders, technology and software behind it.
“This has been a bit of a journey, because of our growth through acquisition. At one point, we had equipment from eight different SMT line manufacturers. We have narrowed that down to three or four.”
This technology focus also extends to embracing new value-adding solutions. “We have started to dabble a little bit more in automation, and our location in China is leading the way. It is not a facility run exclusively by robots; but for tasks such as moving materials with ease, or taking over mundane, repetitious tasks from a person, then we will introduce a robot. In the automation arena moving forward, I would say that it’s less focused on labor efficiency and more focused on world class quality and consistency of production.”
While discussing the Chinese location, Patrick noted that the site’s size was more than doubled in 2023, and this brought the conversation to another facility, this time in Toronto, that has also seen an evolution. “We had an opportunity to merge the operations of two closely located facilities into a purpose-built factory that was expanded at the beginning of 2024. It was important to stay in Toronto because we’ve got a phenomenal workforce there and we did not want to lose any of them. The new site expanded our footprint, and we did a ribbon cutting in the first quarter of 2024.
“We’ve made several investments to increase our manufacturing capacity in North America and Asia, and moving forward, we will target where our customers really want us. As we sit right now in our 13 locations, we have more than sufficient capacity to grow significantly in every site. We estimate that the available market in our niche in North America is right around $18 billion. There’s a huge runway for organic growth and we have the capacity to accommodate it.”
From speaking to Patrick, it’s clear that customers are front and center of strategy. Patrick gave an example of a strategic partnership. “We signed a significant deal with defense solutions company L3Harris Technologies in 2023. They were going through a strategic review of their supply chain and identifying certain purchasing areas where they had several different contract manufacturers or suppliers, but didn’t have leverage or a strategic road map with any of them.
“We took the opportunity to design a multiyear program of growth with L3Harris, which benefits both parties, providing robust long-term supply forecasting and increasing engineering and manufacturing collaboration. This supports our ambition to double in size with this partnership over the next two or three years, and we are always thinking about how we mutually benefit one another, both financially and operationally.”
He continues: “This has become the blueprint for how we think about multiyear strategic negotiations with other multinational customers, who are equally important as L3Harris and have scale and opportunity for Creation. We’re focusing on providing them with consistency of experience, whether we’re serving them from our Asia or North American divisions.”
The ability to source products from various global locations has proven a very useful option as the situation with US tariffs continues to play out across the world. “We are seeing several US-based OEMs trying to determine if there are opportunities to partner with Creation because of our facility in China,” Patrick states candidly. “What has been eye opening is that, despite all the changes in supply chain over the last three years and the focus that OEMs have put into that area, several of them are still quite inexperienced in navigating a situation like this.
“That is where we can help customers, using data and our professional staff in the supply chain segment. Our team is ready to demonstrate the flexibility of our Asian supply chain and how it has evolved over the last five years. We can show where the alternatives are and what we can provide for customers. It’s exciting to support customers with the clearest benefits and the certainty of having an undisturbed supply chain.
“I am so proud of how the team here has responded to an ever-changing landscape and really stepped into a strong leadership position with customers, offering support when it is needed. Customers are thirsty for reliable and trustworthy information, as they try to navigate the environment. We strive to be that knowledgeable and calming partner, as it will create opportunities for us in the future.”
As he enters the next stage of his tenure as CEO, Patrick has a strong foundation to build on. “We are going to maintain our focus on our current segments and take an aggressive view of how we can grow with new customers and logos in those areas.
“With our current footprint I see us as having huge opportunities – maintaining our high levels of customer satisfaction, delivering for customers, filling gaps in their skill set, and turning that into profitable growth. We could accelerate that with an acquisition or two potentially, but fundamentally we will continue to execute the strategy that’s been successful for us over the past six years.
“I’m quite optimistic about our business, as we have a phenomenal customer set who are excited about the partnerships that we’re building. I’m thrilled about our team and couldn’t be prouder of what they have already achieved.”