Project Description

Four provinces of Atlantic Canada, need to rapidly expand sustainable employment through increasing export sales of their existing businesses located in their jurisdictions. To this end, the provinces have taken on an aggressive SME export growth strategy focused on the U.S. market. A multi-sector approach is being taken that includes agro-food, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, consumer products, information technology communications, entertainment/cultural, business services, building and construction, energy, technical textiles and metalworking.

Since 2001, MAI has provided expertise to provincial leaders and individual companies in areas of mentoring, development of individual company export strategies, training, market research, market visits, and follow-up assistance. MAI has assisted over 380 Canadian companies participating in 17 trade missions to the U.S.

An independent market research firm conducted an evaluation of MAI’s work on 6 Team Canada Atlantic projects that required MAI to conduct market access and strategy development, mentoring and business linkages to potential buyers, suppliers and joint venture partners over a three day period. This firm found 221 companies had participated in these 6 projects resulting in multi-million US$ in sales, the creation of 126 new positions and the securing of over 487 distributors/representatives for products and services.

In addition to the business components of the trade missions, the Prime Minister of Canada and federal and provincial ministers lead the delegation to the U.S. MAI closely collaborated with its government clients and partners on each mission to ensure that both commercial and political goals are met.