Rise of the robots: How Aces Robotics sells gently used machines

Ed Summers is a robot man. The owner of Aces Robotics in Toronto presides over a 64,000-square-foot showroom stocked with 300-odd used machines, most of them made by Japanese manufacturers Fanuc and Motoman.

A couple of factors are giving his nine-year-old business a boost: a six-month backlog for some new machines, (due in part to a chip shortage) and a dearth of skilled labourers like welders.

“A robot would be like having two or three welders, so if you purchased a robot for 50 grand” – versus upward of $150,000 new – “the return on investment would be paid within a year, and you’d have that labour savings for the next 10 years,” he says. And Aces can have one delivered within 30 days.

Some of the company’s stock has been saved from the literal scrap-heap. One auto maker, he says, “just goes in with a machine and pulls them right out of the concrete and puts them into the trash bin.”

Others come from manufacturers like Magna, which buys thousands of new machines each year, meaning they’re always getting rid of others. “Magna pricing is the best pricing – nobody buys robots cheaper than Magna,” he says.

Aces has six employees, including a pair of robotics technicians, and one who cleans, paints and restores each machine. Their shipping guy has sent eight robots to the U.S. so far this year, though tariffs have put a damper on that business. Eventually, Summers plans to open an outpost stateside.

“U.S. companies are a lot better to deal with – you tell them it’s 20 grand, and they say no problem and send the money,” he says, “whereas Canadian companies are a pain to deal with.”

Summers has a network of scouts who earn a finder’s fee for each robot. The older the machine, the better: “They’re using cheaper parts nowadays, with plastic gears, so they don’t have the same lifespan as ones that are 15, 20 years old,” he says. “A lot of robots from the ’80s are still working today.”

So if you come across any out-of-work robots, you know who to call.