Montreal, QC, May 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Every pill that reaches a patient’s hand, every carton of milk on a grocery shelf, every vaccine vial shipped across borders — behind each of these is a manufacturing process where temperature isn’t just a number on a dial. It’s a promise. A promise that what you consume is safe, uncontaminated, and made exactly the way it should be.
Wattco, a North American manufacturer of industrial electric heating solutions since 1969, understands that promise better than most. Today, the company announced a focused expansion of its custom-engineered band heaters and strip heaters — purpose-built for the pharmaceutical and food processing industries, where the margin for error is zero and the standards are unforgiving.
Where It All Started: Decades of Heating Done Right
Wattco didn’t arrive at this moment overnight. The company has spent more than fifty years manufacturing electric heating products for industries that demand reliability — oil and gas, chemical processing, defence, HVAC, and beyond. That journey built something money can’t buy: the institutional knowledge of what happens when heating goes wrong in high-stakes environments, and the engineering discipline to make sure it doesn’t.
From its early days producing flanged heaters and screw plug heaters for petroleum applications, Wattco grew into a full-spectrum heating manufacturer. Its product line expanded to include circulation heaters, immersion heaters, cartridge heaters, duct heaters, silicone rubber heaters, and, critically for this announcement, band heaters and strip heaters that serve as the backbone of indirect and surface heating across dozens of applications.
Along the way, Wattco earned CSA, UL, and CRUUS certifications not as badges to display, but as a reflection of the quality assurance methodology baked into every heater that leaves its facility. Products are made in North America, designed to meet the exact specifications of each customer’s application, and backed by what the company calls the fastest turnaround time in the industry.
The Present: Why Pharma and Food Processing Need Better Heating
The pharmaceutical and food processing industries have always required careful temperature management. But the standards are getting stricter. Regulatory bodies worldwide are tightening requirements around contamination prevention, product traceability, and energy efficiency.
Manufacturers in these sectors need heating solutions that don’t just work; they need solutions that work safely, cleanly, and with precision that can be documented and audited.
This is where Wattco’s band heaters and strip heaters come in — and why the company is doubling down on them for these sectors.
Band heaters provide indirect heating by wrapping around pipes, drums, and barrels. In pharmaceutical manufacturing, this matters enormously. Many chemical compounds, solvents, and active ingredients are volatile — they cannot be exposed to direct heating elements without risking degradation or dangerous reactions. Wattco’s mica-insulated and ceramic band heaters deliver controlled, even heat from the outside in, protecting the integrity of what’s inside the vessel. Another unique heating device is the strip heater, which works differently from the cartridge heater but is just as important.
This type of heater is flat in shape and is meant for surface application, thus delivering uniform heat distribution on moulds, ovens, heating chambers, and packaging machinery. Strip heaters are employed in food processing when maintaining precise temperatures is crucial, such as in pasteurisation, baking, sterilisation, drying, and sealing applications. Wattco’s strip heaters are also available with finned configurations for air heating applications, expanding their versatility across production environments.
What Wattco Is Doing Differently?
This expansion isn’t about adding a new product to a catalogue. It’s about re-engineering existing strengths for new demands.
Wattco’s R&D department — which the company describes as constantly improving designs and techniques to take advantage of the latest in technology — is focused on adapting its band heaters and strip heaters for the specific materials, hygiene protocols, and safety certifications that pharmaceutical and food processing clients require. This includes working with alloys that resist corrosion from cleaning chemicals, designing for easy disassembly and sanitation, and integrating with Wattco’s own range of digital temperature control panels — from SCR direct control panels to multistage and hybrid configurations — for auditable, repeatable temperature management.
The company is also drawing on its experience with explosion-proof heating in hazardous environments. Pharmaceutical facilities often handle flammable solvents and volatile compounds. Wattco already manufactures explosion-proof duct heaters and NEMA 7 control panels for oil and gas and mining applications — that same engineering discipline is now being applied to ensure band heaters and strip heaters can operate safely in environments where a single spark is not an option.
Looking Ahead: How This Changes the Future of Industrial Heating
The bigger picture here isn’t just about two product lines. It’s about where industrial heating is going.
With the expansion of the pharmaceutical and food processing sectors, as well as the challenges associated with an ever-increasing population, drug research, and complicated supply chains, the demand for electric heaters which are safe, energy efficient, cost-effective,
and reliable will become even more prominent. Electric heaters have been used extensively and offer clean technology with no carbon emissions whatsoever, requiring much less maintenance than other types of energy sources. Government regulatory bodies are enforcing the use of electric heating more aggressively to meet carbon emission standards and reduce the carbon footprint of industrial operations.
Wattco is positioning its band heaters and strip heaters at the centre of this shift. The company has already demonstrated its ability to push heating technology into unexpected territory — its molten salt heating solution, developed in partnership with a prominent nonprofit foundation, has been generating energy for remote villages in Africa since 2017, reaching temperatures beyond what traditional alloys could achieve. That same spirit of innovation is now being channelled into making band heaters and strip heaters smarter, safer, and more attuned to the industries that feed and heal us.
Wattco has also been exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and temperature control, a topic the company has addressed publicly on its blog. The future of band heaters and strip heaters in regulated industries could well involve AI-driven temperature optimisation systems that predict, adjust, and document temperature behaviour in real time, giving manufacturers the confidence that every batch meets specification without manual intervention.
The Human Side of Heating
At the core of each Wattco heater lies the knowledge gained by engineers and sales experts whose whole career has been dedicated to understanding the intricacies of heat energy in
real-life industrial applications. As part of Wattco's Lunch & Learn program, engineers and other members of the industry community are invited to further their expertise in the application of heating equipment.
When a pharmaceutical plant in Ontario needs a band heater that can safely heat a drum of volatile solvent without direct contact, Wattco doesn’t just ship a standard unit. Its team works with the client to understand the medium, the environment, the safety requirements, and the regulatory landscape — then custom-engineers a solution. The same goes for a food processing facility that needs strip heaters calibrated for precise pasteurisation temperatures across a production line. Every project is different, and Wattco treats it that way.
A Company Built for What’s Next
Wattco has never been a company that stands still. From its origins in the late 1960s to its expansion into skid heating systems, ASME pressure vessels, integral electric heating systems, and thermodynamic isolation modules, the company has continuously grown its capabilities to match the world’s evolving industrial needs.
With this focused expansion of band heaters and strip heaters for pharmaceutical and food processing applications, Wattco is doing what it has always done best: listening to what industries need, and building the heating solutions that make those industries safer, cleaner, and more efficient — one custom-engineered heater at a time.
About Wattco
Wattco has been a manufacturing company developing electric heating products for use around the world since 1969. Serving industries including oil and gas, chemical, food, pharmaceutical, defence, and HVAC, Wattco manufactures a complete line of flange heaters, circulation heaters, tubular heaters, band heaters, strip heaters, immersion heating elements, skid heating systems, and temperature control panels. All products are CSA and UL certified and made in North America.
Name: Ash B Email: ash@wattco.com Job Title: Marketing Manager
