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OPPORTUNITIES NORTH: NWT and Nunavut manufacturing sales reach $47 million

Led by NunavutSA¹ú¼ÊÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½™s blistering pace, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut combined for manufacturing sales of $47 million in 2022, a 13.8 per cent improvement over $41.3 million in sales in 2021.
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Crates of Sunrise Cabinets and Millwork product bound for the north. Based in Enterprise, the company is a GNWT-approved manufacturer and has been a member of the Northern ManufacturerSA¹ú¼ÊÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½™s Association since 1998. Photo courtesy of Sunrise Cabinets and Millwork

Led by NunavutSA¹ú¼ÊÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½™s blistering pace, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut combined for manufacturing sales of $47 million in 2022, a 13.8 per cent improvement over $41.3 million in sales in 2021.

The 2022 figure was the best performance since 2018 when the two territories achieved $50.2 million in combined sales.

Statistics Canada usually does not break down Nunavut and the NWTSA¹ú¼ÊÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½™s manufacturing sales figures separately month by month because sales can be so small for either territory and could thereby reveal belonging to a single manufacturer, depriving that company of privacy.

However, the national statistics agency did reveal manufacturing details independently for each territory throughout 2022 and it showed that Nunavut did a brisk $34.5 million in sales compared to $12.5 million for the NWT.

NunavutSA¹ú¼ÊÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½™s best month came in June, which brought in $4.9 million in transactions. The NWTSA¹ú¼ÊÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½™s top month was March at $2.3 million.

The first few months of 2023 saw Statistics Canada once again release only combined figures for the two territories and March, at approximately $2 million in sales based on preliminary data, was 40.6 per cent slower than March 2022. February also resulted in close to $2 million in combined sales while January was stronger at $4 million.

In Nunavut, manufacturing represented 0.52 per cent of the territorySA¹ú¼ÊÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½™s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022, up from 0.46 per cent in 2021. Manufacturing only accounted for just 0.32 per cent of the NWTSA¹ú¼ÊÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½™s gross domestic product in 2022, down slightly from 0.35 per cent in 2020 and 2021.

In the NWT, the industry received $54,693 in Support for Entrepreneurs and Economic Development (SEED) funding in 2021-22, representing 1.3 per cent of that financial assistance.

Fact file

Manufacturing sales for NWT and Nunavut in 2022 (seasonally adjusted)

Nunavut

January $631,000

February $1.9 million

March $1.5 million

April $1.9 million

May $3.3 million

June $4.9 million

July $4.7 million

August $4.3 million

September $2.8 million

October $3.1 million

November $2.6 million

December $2.9 million

NWT

January $1.4 million

February $2 million

March $2.3 million

April $584,000

May $958,000

June $737,000

July $936,000

August $984,000

September $696,000

October $695,000

November $400,000

December $804,000

Source: Statistics Canada

For more stories from Opportunities North 2023, click this link: /special-feature-publications/opportunities-north-2023/



About the Author: Derek Neary

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