First-time Local Exporters Garner $6M In Sales

Friday, February 23, 2007 04:01 AM

From zero to $6-million dollars in a year...

Not bad for the first year of a program aimed at helping small companies in the region find international markets. The program is a partnership involving Export North (a division of Initiatives Prince George), the Community Futures Development Corporation and the federal government.

Spokesperson Gerry Offet says 2006 was quite a kick-off. "We had proven success with 20 client firms having no export activity, now showing over $6-million dollars in sales."

Offet says some of the firms are still very small, and he says to make the leap from no export sales to several million dollars is a worthy accomplishment.

He says the businesses involved included consulting firms, companies that sell milling equipment and those that provide various kinds of services to the forest industry. "Primarily, we’re capitalizing on our knowledge base."

As for the potential for growth, Offet says there is significant opportunity. He says, "The challenge is working with companies so that they can understand their own capabilities and encouraging them to take the risks that are inherent in getting into new markets - they’re a long time in coming."

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Posted on Friday, February 23, 2007 04:01 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: Palopu on February 23 2007 8:44 PM

It would be interesting to know who the clients are, what they sell, and how much each one sold, and where they sold it too; Also how big is the Region.

Without any specifics you are left guessing as to what was actually accomplished. $5 Million could have come from one company and the balance $1 Million could have been spread between the other 19. In other words $50,000.00 each.

Posted by: Harbinger on February 23 2007 8:53 PM

What do they sell? Logs obviously. What else do we "make" that anyone would be able to sell? Log exports should be banned. Even if the demand goes up. Log exports is a euphemism fer job exports. Simple as that.

Posted by: owl on February 24 2007 1:00 AM

The Tsunami housing would be one ....

Posted by: Chadermando on February 24 2007 3:16 AM

IMO it is probably a Chamber of Commerce related company that is good at getting our municipal tax dollars to help subsidize their export of:

'included consulting firms, companies that sell milling equipment, and those that provide various kinds of services to the forest industry.'

In other words those that are selling our competitive advantage to our future competitors in Russia, so they are well positioned to profit from the transition, because markets go where the competitive advantage is greatest, and Russia's fibre resource is the greatest competitive advantage in the future dimensional lumber industry.

Hence it all makes sense to use our tax dollars to subsidize competitive export to our tax payers competitors. This way those on the 'leading edge' of the:

"Primarily, we�re capitalizing on our knowledge base."

can capitalize on the advantage and get rich with spin off benefits for everyone... maybe....

I�m suspicious of the whole idea. I guess I would feel different if our tax dollars were going towards exporting products and not competitive advantage.