Access to capital holds back the blue economy

Plus, MarineLabs' ForecastAI multiplies its weather outlook.

Author

Emily Edwards
December 15, 2024

Welcome to this week’s Sunday Briefing. In this issue, learn about how the City of Victoria’s mayor is doing halfway through her term, changes to MarineLabs’ ForecastAI, and a bountiful Giving Tuesday at the University of Victoria.

Now on to today’s briefing. It’s 813 words: a three-minute read.

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The COAST team. Source: COAST

Access to capital holds back the blue economy

The Centre for Ocean Applied Sustainable Technologies (COAST) released the results of its 2024 BC Blue Economy Ecosystem Survey earlier this month. The survey, hosted in partnership with the University of Victoria’s Impact Investing Hub, was designed to serve as an assessment of the province’s blue economy sector and includes responses from 63 participants.

The report includes sections on the organizational profiles of respondents, barriers to growth within the blue economy, and access to capital, talent, markets, and facilities and equipment.

COAST highlighted five key takeaways from the BC Blue Economy Ecosystem Survey:

Companies over-depend on government funding: Respondents indicated a notable dependency (80 percent) on government grants as a primary focus for fundraising.

Access to financial capital is the greatest barrier to growth: One in two companies sees access to capital as a barrier to growth with 82% seeking capital in the next 2-3 years.

Dock facilities with access to water and testing/demonstration sites are needed in BC: Respondents indicated their interest in shared innovation spaces to meet these needs.

Companies at all stages wish to focus business efforts here in British Columbia: Over 90% of respondents count BC as their target market regardless of company stage.

Hiring and workforce development is a priority: Eighty-eight percent of companies are planning to expand their teams in the next two to three years.

COAST

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📰 More Victoria innovation news

🙌 Oh, we’re halfway there: Halfway through her term, City of Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto checked in with the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce’s Bruce Williams in this episode of the Chamber Chats podcast.

⛈️ The future has arrived: MarineLabs announced changes to its ForecastAI tool, released in July of this year. ForecastAI now provides “10-day highly accurate, hyper-local weather forecasts,” a jump from the initial 48-hour forecast.

🤝 Together we can: The University of Victoria raised over $1 million in donations for Giving Tuesday, the most the post-secondary has collected since it began hosting campaigns in 2016. Giving Tuesday is a global movement intended to counter Black Friday.

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