With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1494678
SOURCES: RESEARCH AND MARKETS, VANCOUVER ECONOMIC COMMISSION, IPSOS, UBC, METANAUT, VIRTRO, THINKIFIC, CANELEARN, CANADIAN DIGITAL LEARNING RESEARCH ASSOCIATION, BCNET, OPENAI, FISHBOWL G O F I G U R E MARCH/APRIL 2023 BCBUSINESS.CA 17 A January survey by Vancouver-based e-learning platform provider Thinkific found that 60% of their content creators had or planned to sell an online learning community as part of their course offerings 11.1% of K-12 students in B.C. are enrolled in online distance learning (2021/22) 2ND HIGHEST SHARE IN CANADA, AFTER ALBERTA Share of Canadian university course enrolments that were fully available online in 2019: 11% Share in 2021: 74% The BCNET advanced fibre network helps 180 B.C. colleges, universities and research institutes share data and IT infrastructure through 9,980 kilometres of dedicated ultra-high-speed fibre ChatGPT, an AI app released last November, can write a complete term paper in 20 seconds 1,000,000 Number of people who signed up for a ChatGPT account within 5 days of the product's launch 19% Share of teachers in a January survey by U.S. company Fishbowl who say they have used generative AI in their work Fibre Optics Victoria-based Bast Fibre Technologies wants to replace the plastic in your products by Nathan Caddell M A N U FAC T U R I NG B ast Fibre Technologies might be the most ste- reotypical Victoria busi- ness of all time. Run out of the University of Victoria's Vancou- ver Island Technology Park, the company manufactures hemp fibre on an industrial scale in an attempt to replace plastic and other nonrenewable materials in many household items. But while it might be easy to write the company off as a "hemp weav- er on the Island," BFT's accomplish- ments and future goals are about as lofty as they come. The last couple of years in particular have been a whirl- wind. In May 2021, the manu- facturer secured an $8.5-million Series A funding round sup- ported in part by well-known American cannabis investment firm Merida Capital Holdings. A year later, it had acquired both a North Carolina manu- facturing facility and a German textile processing facility. Then, in October 2022, the crown jewel: a "major strategic invest- ment" from Finnish investment giant Ahlström Capital that took a 20-percent ownership stake. The financing will re- portedly enable BFT to produce over 10,000 metric tons of hemp fibre per year by the end of 2023, and up to 50,000 met- ric tons per year by 2026. That has effectively elimi- nated the company's biggest problem. "That was our chal- lenge, the processing capacity and getting it finished at scale for big industry," says BFT brand and design manager Caleb Bey- ers. "We're trying to keep up with demand; there are a lot of people who want the fibre." The renewable material can be used to help produce items like diapers, cosmetics and cleaning products. It can also play a role in building construc- tion. After the upscale in pro- duction, BFT—which has some 50 employees—had to shift its technical head office to Green- ville, South Carolina, where the company has repurposed an old cotton facility. That city is something of a mecca for the very industry that BFT wants to change. "Everybody who's making fabric and packaging stuff up is doing it in the Ameri- can South because it's all made out of cotton," says Beyers. The Ahlström investment promises to open some previ- ously closed doors for the company. "It's exciting to me—it means we're actually going to be able to start making enough fibre to see our projects out there in the world and land major supply contracts," says Beyers, who notes that the company is in discussion with "ev- erybody from Nike for technical fabrics to Loblaws for household wipes." Those agree- ments usually revolve around specific projects and have terms to set standards for sus- tainability profiles and carbon ratings. An agreement that BFT recently made with Texas- based feminine hygiene brand Hempress Hygienics took about a year to finalize. It has another on the go with American mul- tinational Procter & Gamble. "I just love that we're doing indus- trial-scale fibre out of hemp," says Beyers. "It's one of the most fascinating crops, and it's ripe for a proper comeback." £ PLASTIC-FREE Bast Fibre plans to produce over 10,000 metric tons of hemp fibre per year