BCBUSINESS.CA SEPTEMBER 2017 BCBUSINESS 29
Trade
hen Ken and Vaughn Anderson
founded Atlas Manufacturing
Ltd. in the late 1990s, they
knew the Canadian market
for their water-well drilling
equipment wasn't big enough.
So their small Vancouver Island company looked
to the U.S., where a boom in single-family home
construction was creating huge demand for
their casing hammers, used to drill wells on indi-
vidual properties. That business dried up in the
2008…09 †nancial meltdown, but the Andersons
designed new products for other industries,
including oil and gas, and built a global cus-
tomer base. (See page 30 for details.)
When it comes to trade with other nations,
Atlas and its peers play an outsized role. B.C.'s
small and medium-sized enterprises generated
almost $12.9 billion worth of exports in 2014,
according to Statistics Canada and BC Stats,
accounting for 36 per cent of the provincial total.
Not bad, says Dan Baxter, director of policy
development, government and stakeholder
relations at the BC Chamber of Commerce, but
there's room for improvement. "It's an amazing
number—over a third of our exports are coming
from
SMEs," Baxter notes. "But it also goes to
show that those larger companies are doing 64
per cent. So that's where there's still so much
opportunity to get more of those B.C. exporters
not just into the export game but to increase the
value of their product and do more trade."
But as uncertainty swirls around the renego-
tiation of the North American Free Trade Agree-
ment
(NAFTA), many of those †rms must be
nervous. Although B.C. is less reliant on America
as a trading partner than other provinces, 54 per
cent of our exports go to U.S. markets. The new
Canada–European Union Comprehensive Eco-
nomic and Trade Agreement
(CETA) will prob-
ably change the picture. Currently, mainland
China, Japan and South Korea follow the U.S. as
the top destinations for the province's goods and
services. Watch for the U.K. (No. 11) and other
European nations to grow in signi†cance.
Here, we check in with four small B.C.
companies that are thriving everywhere from
Australia to California to Saudi Arabia—and with
experts who share their tips for conquering
international markets.
Want to break into the export game? Already
taken your business global? As
NAFTA talks heat up, got
a Plan B for tapping markets beyond the U.S.?
Powered by the BC Chamber of Commerce
and its provincewide network, our handy guide to
international trade offers real-life lessons, practical tips
and expert advice for newbies and veterans alike
s t o r i e s b y M a r c i e G o o d
p h o t o g r a p h s b y N i k W e s t
