ISTOCK jULY/AUGUST 2018 BCBusiness 45
The same oce was home to Nanaimo Economic
Development Corp.
(NEDC) until late 2016, when
then-CEO
John Hankins penned an op-ed criticizing
city ocials' decision to remove tourism market-
ing from
NEDC's mandate. The city „red Hankins
before closing the development corporation that
December. There's perhaps no better metaphor for
Nanaimo, which seems to be succeeding in spite of
itself: a company takes over the premises of a defunct
municipal agency aimed at luring businesses.
Northern Biomass is one of the new players in an
emerging entrepreneurial economy that is making
people reconsider this city of 90,000, which has
traditionally relied on „shing, mining and forestry.
For many, though, the Harbour City is still best
known for its namesake confection, the Nanaimo
bar, shopping mall sprawl and the Loyal Nanaimo
Bathtub Society (whose annual bathtub race,
which takes place from July 20 to 22, is a favourite
summer event). And, unfortunately, for civic chaos.
For the past three years, business triumphs have
been routinely trumped by headlines highlighting
Nanaimo's monumentally dysfunctional municipal
council. Like they're watching a car wreck in slow
motion, citizens „nd it hard not to gawk as the news
cycle dishes out salacious reports of bullying and
insult swapping among Mayor Bill McKay and city
councillors, questions about the mayor's business
dealings and a lawsuit involving a former city sta"er.
Andrea Rosato-Taylor, one-time publisher of the
Nanaimo Daily News and a sales manager with Black
Press, is one of the organizers behind Vision 2020, a
rally „rst held in 2011 and again in April 2017 to show
Nanaimo as a welcoming place to launch a business.
In other words, to counter the ™ow of negativity
from city hall.
"We're all just holding our breath until this coun-
cil is done," Rosato-Taylor says at a co"ee shop on
"Availability of wood bre and a deep-sea port that gives us access to markets," Mckay says when
asked what prompted his company's move from Prince George to Nanaimo last summer. "We did a fea-
sibility study, and Nanaimo came out on top." ❖ The pilot facility is the „rst of six plants that Northern
Biomass plans to build in Western Canada as it seeks to capture a share of the US$8-billion North American
market for biochar, a carbon product derived from wood waste via pyrolysis (using heat to alter the chemi-
cal composition of organics in the absence of oxygen). When Mckay talked to BCBusiness in May, he had
secured land at an undisclosed location but was still busy with „nancing—so busy that he hadn't „nished
moving into his new digs on Nanaimo's waterfront.
sHIp sHapE
A busy port,
Nanaimo has also
become a haven
for businesses
outside its traditional
resource industries
