First Quarter Update and Highlights

We hit the ground running in 2019, with an ambitious plan that outlines concrete metrics to set our community up for success. Our 2019 Business Plan supports the fifth and final year of the 2015-19 Strategic Plan entitled “Realizing a High-Performing Economy: Igniting the Transformation”.

We simplified the language in this year’s plan, and continue to focus on the work we do to:

Promote

Advancing a compelling narrative about our region. We focus on marketing to key audiences for business growth, investment and visitation, as well as stakeholder communications and media relations.

We’ve had some incredible media results from this quarter including:

Sandra Phinney – Adventures in Understanding

Jim Fox – One Tank Trips (published in the Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, The London Free Press and The Chatham Daily News)

National Geographic’s 10 Must-Have Experiences in Ontario – including the Canadian Canoe Route

Narcity’s “You Can Skate Along a 2km Frozen Canal Just Outside of Toronto This Winter

Start

Supporting business through early growth phases. This includes both supporting new businesses as they launch and open their doors, as well as supporting the critical early growth phase in Years 2 – 5, which we are continuously improving upon with the launch of our GrowthWheel programming.

In the first quarter, we rolled up our sleeves to support businesses. We conducted 17 workshops (including New Venture Sessions and Business Fundamentals Workshops) with a cumulative 324 attendees, we supported 11 businesses as they opened their doors and worked with 111 clients who are interested in starting a business through the ideation phase of business development.

We also saw the expansion of Boden Contracting – a business first launched through the 2016 Summer Company Program. Owner Michael Boden has now completed a civil engineering degree from Queen’s University and has continued his business throughout his studies. He will now be pursuing self-employment full-time as he continues to grow Boden Contracting, and has come back to the Business Advisory Centre to get support to hire two new staff in order to keep up with growing demands of his business.

Grow

Treating Business Retention and Expansion is a core activity for us as a regional economic development agency – we strive to support businesses to thrive and grow in our communities. Through our robust Business Retention & Expansion program we focus on collecting and analyzing data, relationship building, and supporting businesses as they identify and respond to challenges and opportunities.

A major undertaking in our first quarter focused on an Agriculture BR&E project completed with the support of OMAFRA, and the work of members of various economic development committees throughout the County of Peterborough.

We also hosted a very successful Business & Entrepreneurship Conference for established members of our region’s business community. This event had incredible speakers on the topics of Digital Marketing, Sales, Legal and Financial Management.

Attract

Attracting new investment and assessment to the region is also key to growing a region that supports job creation for the projected growth. Recently, Peterborough topped the national list of fastest growing communities, and we need to build the jobs of the future in order to remain competitive for business.

We focus on five key growth sectors: Advanced Manufacturing, Aerospace, Agriculture, Cleantech and Tourism (including Meetings, Conferences & Sports Tourism) as well as attracting visitors.

In the first quarter we worked with 9 new leads, 5 in cleantech, 1 in retail and 2 in education. We also successfully recruited five new events to the area Ontario 55+ Summer Games, Mad Bastard Scooter Rally, Caesarstone Dealer Conference, TOPS  and the MDB Insight Corporate Retreat.