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It may be a new era with a different set of economic challenges, but after 14 years of working together, a group of Southern states and Canadian provinces are still focused on the same solution: collective resiliency through trusted business relationships.
The Southeast United States Canadian Provinces Alliance returned to Savannah Monday for the first time since its inaugural conference took place in 2008 during an unfolding financial crisis, just a year after the group was officially formed in Montreal.
Convening in-person for the first time since 2019, leaders including three provincial premiers, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and various heads of delegation from participating states and provinces described today’s alliance as a framework for like-minded partners to boost trust and trade both sides of the border.
“As we emerge from the pandemic and feel the stress on our economy and supply chains, it’s incumbent upon all of us as political leaders, and you as business leaders, to view this not as an overwhelming challenge, but in fact as an opportunity to change how we do business to overcome geopolitical risks with strong local partnerships,” said Andrew Furey, premier of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which will host next year’s summit.
Former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, now the chancellor of the University System of Georgia, said the unsung value of being in the “best neighborhood in the world” — North America — helped drive the creation of the alliance during his second term.
“When we started looking at who our trading partners were from Georgia, Canada just rose above all,” Mr. Perdue said, noting that the alliance was modeled after a successful one with Japan. “We were already doing more business with Canada than we were anywhere else internationally. So it made all the sense in the world. Why not develop it?”
It’s not just for Georgia: Canada is the top export destination for most states in the South, evidenced by the statistics rattled off progressively by state leaders seated before an array of flags during Monday’s opening ceremony.
The alliance’s annual meeting is pitched as an antidote to the typical trade conference. Government leaders offer their imprimatur, and some panel discussions are arranged, but the bulk of the program revolves around business matchmaking. The intentionality has been core to the conference’s success, leaders said.
“Obviously, governments don’t create jobs. They help facilitate putting people who do create jobs together,” Mr. Perdue said.
This year, more than 90 companies were slated to participate, many of them handpicked by authorities because of their potential for expansion in either the U.S. or Canadian markets. Six large Georgia-based anchor companies — Kia Motors, Southern Co., Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola Co., Norfolk Southern and the Georgia Ports Authority — provided a solid opportunity for many of the more entrepreneurial ventures.
Million-dollar-plus deals valued signed during the first day of the event were evidence that a three-year hiatus due to COVID-19 had not sapped the alliance’s power to spark real engagement, despite a ballroom that seemed sparsely populated at times, in part due to canceled flights and COVID-19 snafus that had some attendees arriving late or not at all. (A nearby earthquake Saturday threw another wrench into the conference, cutting off access from the Westin Savannah Harbor resort to the convention center — shuttles were provided.)
New Partnership for New Industries
Pat Wilson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said private-sector leadership has been a hallmark of the conference since the alliance’s inception.
“The political relationships truly are on the periphery. It’s the business-to-business relationships that are driving this, and that helps drive our overall relationship with the provinces,” Mr. Wilson told Global Atlanta, noting that he first saw this in action during his first SEUS/CP in 2011.
Mr. Wilson also echoed sentiments of those who said now is a time to reinvigorate a friendship that operates so well it can sometimes be taken for granted — especially at a time of geopolitical upheaval in supply chains.
A dialogue that emerged around electric-vehicle raw materials provided an example of how SEUS/CP can help the countries tackle transformative industries together.
Mr. Furey, the Newfoundland and Labrador premier, said he’d discussed with Mr. Kemp, the Georgia governor, the fact that the province is now providing nickel for U.S.-made Tesla electric cars.
Those same reserves could help producers like SK Battery, Hyundai and Rivian, whose record-breaking announcements in Georgia have played into Mr. Kemp’s initiative to make the state a hub for electric car manufacturing.
Working with provinces like Newfoundland (or Quebec, which has its own strategic deposits) could be an antidote for getting minerals from “unstable and unfriendly countries” around the world, Mr. Wilson said.
“Not only (does Newfoundland) have the nickel deposits, but they also do the refining with hydropower, and so you’re looking at low-carbon-footprint nickel refining, and for every company that’s building batteries and focused on the future of electrification, that’s going to be an important part of that process,” Mr. Wilson said.
Newfoundland also presented its tourism and tech bona fides, exemplified by Nasdaq’s $2.75 billion acquisition of a homegrown cybersecurity companies, Verafin. That deal showed how even the province’s remote geography no longer limits growth in a digital world, Mr. Furey said.
Nova Scotia, which already is building tech ties with Atlanta, was also represented by its premier, Tim Houston, who praised the quality of companies at the conference and encouraged them to collaborate.
“We’re back in person. There’s no substitute for in person,” said Mr. Houston. “We’re all here together, and we’re going to do some great things together.”
Others expressed more muted optimism about the conference, telling Global Atlanta that provincial leaders needed more concrete demonstrations of value before deepening their commitments.
And the Georgia-Canada friendship is not immune to irritants. Newspapers in Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province with 165,000 inhabitants, have criticized the government of Premier Dennis King for an alleged snub of Mr. Kemp in advance of the conference.
Mr. King reportedly refused requests by Mr. Kemp to discuss the dismissal of a $400 million port development proposal by Georgia agribusiness entrepreneur Phillip Jennings, who farms turf grass and other crops in Georgia and has invested millions in a blueberry operation in PEI, as the province is known.
At the conference, however, Mr. King focused on the positives as he praised four companies from his province — the Port of Charlottetown, Harbourside Engineering, Aspin Kemp & Associates engineering firm and Up360, which is bringing virtual reality to employment training.
“We’re an incredible province. We don’t know we’re small, so please don’t tell us. It’s never stopped us before; we punch above our weight.” Mr. King said, noting that the province is known for exports like potatoes and lobster has thousands of workers employed in bioscience, aerospace and other tech-intensive sectors.
“We will continue to explore the opportunities in the Southern U.S. because you are a great trading partner and even better friends,” said Mr. King, noting that he helped lay the groundwork for the 2008 Savannah conference but wasn’t able to attend because his candidate lost re-election.
“It’s great to finally be here,” Mr. King said.
Companies Capitalize on Trust
For many growing Canadian firms, business meetings with large anchor companies in Georgia proved an invaluable opportunity.
New Brunswick-based Millennia Tea hit its stride during the pandemic, when a sudden spike in demand for immune-boosting products coincided with years of preparation to bring its frozen tea cubes to the masses.
Co-founder Tracy Bell said the company started in 2015 after a health scare in her family. She and husband Rory spent three years scouring scientific research on tea as an antioxidant-rich superfood, building out a sourcing network in Sri Lanka, patenting their process and structuring a cold chain that starts with flash freezing organic tea leaves at the source to preserve its health benefits.
The product hit the market in 2018 but ironically took off in 2020-21, when specialty and health food stores stepped back from accepting new products during the pandemic.
“All of those leads and verbal commitments dried up for us overnight. But mass grocery was seeing an influx of foot traffic and people looking specifically for immune-boosting products,” said Ms. Bell. Now, Millennia Tea is in 750 Canadian stores and ships directly to consumers across Canada.
Opportunities New Brunswick invited Ms. Bell to SEUS/CP, where she saw the benefit of “partnership mindset” where business can walk through doors government has opened.
Ms. Bell was set to meet with Coca-Cola Co., which she hopes will keep her in mind as she hones a new strategy for the U.S. market.
“With the U.S., I’m less interested in starting in the conventional grocery channel and more interested in opening up a new business channel and starting in the path of better-for-you ingredients, having us be a superfood ingredient in other nutritious brews, the non-alcoholic beer sector, kombucha or beauty products.” Smoothie franchise Jamba Juice, another target customer, is part of Atlanta-based Focus Brands.
The Southeast and the four provinces of Atlantic Canada, Ms. Bell said, share a welcoming and hospitable spirit that can help build the trust necessary to take a big step into a new market.
“Trust is always being broken, built or destroyed, so the automatic trust that gets built through a partnership and an event such as this is high, so it makes Georgia and the region in general high on my priority list,” she told Global Atlanta.
As she praised the state’s logistics network, a container ship lumbered upriver toward the Port of Savannah’s Garden City Terminal, which just announced record monthly container volume.
Participating states include Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Canadian provinces include Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador.
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