Financial Post Staff Financial Post From building artificial intelligence systems and researching stem cells to designing pet toys and making beer, being innovative can take many forms, as this look at companies across the country shows
Today, the company offers some 2,500 products and services used by scientists around the world for stem-cell, immunology, cancer, regenerative-medicine and other cell-therapy research. One of its latest products, a next-generation culture system that allows researchers to get a more consistent cell culture environment, is “flying off the shelves,” says Eaves, who serves as the company’s CEO and president.
regulatory compliance levels required to support such trials. “This way we can bring our stem-culture media production in the U.S. back to Canada where we can have full oversight,” Eaves says, noting that the hundreds of new, high-paying jobs in B.C. are a great side benefit. “We have been contracting out some of our culture media production, but it has been time-consuming and expensive because these companies don’t have the knowledge we have.
Given Questor’s position as one of the country’s top clean-tech companies, Mascarenhas had high hopes for carbon taxes and emission-reducing plans in the company’s home province and across Canada. But her 15-year-old company’s domestic business has shrunk to the point where she is considering moving to the U.S., where she says better regulations are in force in multiple states. “The carbon tax has created mass confusion,” she says.
Questor has grown in part by selling technology in those other regions. In 2013, half its revenues originated in Canada and half in the U.S. The company has since moved the vast majority of its equipment to Colorado and generated close to 98% of its revenues outside Canada in the fourth quarter of 2018. Part of the reason for the dramatic shift is that ConocoPhillips Co.
Hundreds of companies make beer in Canada, but this Hamilton brewer uses the arts to stand out from the crowd — oh, the beer is great, too. By Jake Edmiston It’s the art, however, that gets much of the attention. The brewery puts out a quarterly call for artwork, then a volunteer panel selects the winning artists from an average submission pool of more than 2,000. It pays these artists to feature their art on its labels, changing the art on each of its core beer offerings four times a year. Collective Arts also hosts festivals to showcase artists and musicians.
In Boston, Collective Arts partnered with the Boston Tattoo Convention and produced labels with works from four major tattoo artists. The company is able to do that quickly, Johnston says, partly because it prints labels that wrap around blank cans, rather than printing it directly on the steel. That way, it isn’t required to place orders for truckloads of printed cans, which need to be ordered months in advance and just don’t look as nice.
The office equipment cost $500 at a government auction and all the office workers are crammed into a single room on the top floor of the brewery, tight enough that Johnston can’t have a conversation without being overheard. But he seems content with that. “There’s a lot of people who come into [the industry] with the intention of having the neighbourhood brewery,” he says. “Some days I wish that was our intention. But we for some reason have a thirst for, a love for chaos.
More recently, Bianchini points to Hatch-inspired designs such as the Keeyask Generating Station in Manitoba, an expansion of a hydro-electric power plant that will service some 400,000 homes when complete in 2021. “Projects like this continue to solve Canada’s energy issues and help to build long-term sustainable solutions for the nation,” he says.
Hatch’s manifesto — to be passionately committed to the pursuit of a better world through positive change — isn’t just corporate lip service either, Bianchini says. “That seriously is a key part of our culture; we stay close to our clients and are immersed in the communities they operate in so we’re deeply connected and able to help them” he says, noting that his executive team spends 50% of their time in the air to visit clients around the world.