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/