Japan's Mitsubishi expands in salmon farming with acquisitions in Norway, Canada
'In recent years, securing food resources has become a critical global challenge driven by population growth,' Mitsubishi said in a statement.
The acquisition of three companies from Norwegian Grieg Seafood ASA GRGSF was made via Cermaq Group, Mitsubishi's salmon farming company with assets in Norway, Canada and Chile. It will boost salmon production to around 280,000 tons in the 2027 fiscal year, up from some 200,000 tons produced by Cermaq annually now.
The acquisition price is NOK10.2-billion ($1.3-billion), Cermaq said in a separate statement.
Salmon is among the most popular sushi items in Japan, but the bulk of it is imported from other countries, including Norway and Chile. Japan aims to raise the share of locally sourced seafood it consumes to 94 per cent in 2033 from 54 per cent now.
In October, Marubeni MARUY began selling salmon from a farm operated near Mount Fuji by its Norwegian partner, adding to the seafood business where its rivals Mitsubishi and Mitsui MITSY are also present.
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Globe and Mail
30 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Shipbuilding, aerospace to be priorities in federal strategy to transform defence sector, Joly says
Federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly says aerospace and shipbuilding are areas where Canada can excel as the government prepares its Defence Industrial Strategy, which aims to transform the country's status as a laggard to a leader in the sector. The strategy, which Ms. Joly said should be finalized in the coming months, will be key in shaping the future of Canada's defence industry, through items such as job creation in manufacturing, strengthened ties with Europe and a renewed relationship with the private sector. 'We're doing this because, fundamentally, we cannot take our peace for granted any more,' she said in an interview Tuesday with The Globe and Mail. Prime Minister Mark Carney has committed to boosting Canada's spending on defence to 2 per cent of its gross domestic product this fiscal year, and to 5 per cent by 2035. The latter NATO target will require Canada spend up to $150-billion annually, more than double its existing budget. How should Canada rearm itself? Fix aging bases, buy submarines, air-defence systems, experts say Through military investment, Ms. Joly said she'd like to see Canada's aerospace sector rebuilt into something that resembles former versions of itself – such as in the 1950s, when the country was known for its Avro Arrow program. She'd also like to see the country's shipyards become an export market for the rest of the world. With the Defence Industrial Strategy on the way, Ms. Joly said the government isn't waiting to take action. Last week, she sent a mandate letter to the Business Development Bank of Canada, a Crown corporation, asking it to work with government on the development of the country's defence sector and sovereign capabilities, such as dual-use technology and military weapons and equipment. More specifically, she asked the bank to support small to medium-sized enterprises that make up the sector's supply chains. In the letter, obtained by The Globe and Mail, Ms. Joly concludes with a request to the BDC to provide her with 'a proposal in alignment with industry best practices to ensure that commercially viable businesses operating in the full scope of defence and security industries can access the financial supports they need to start up, grow and prosper.' It's the first of several mandate letters Ms. Joly will give out to government bodies, such as Export Development Canada, the Canadian Space Agency and the National Research Council, asking them to actively support defence-related businesses and dual-use technologies. First, however, she said the military must be at the table with the private sector to rebuild a level of trust that has been slowly degraded after successive governments failed to adequately invest in defence. 'History has shown us that when you're able to have defence and the private sector really work together, you're able to spear up innovation, make sure that your country is peaceful and, ultimately, create jobs,' Ms. Joly said in the interview. After all, companies want contracts, not subsidies, she said. Supports being rolled out by the government for Canada's steel sector are also part of its push toward building sovereign defence capabilities. For example, Ms. Joly said the country's shipbuilding and aerospace industries should be buying domestic steel. And the fact that these industries have access to a Canadian supply chain for certain materials, such as critical minerals and metals, is a large part of the reason they're being identified as priorities in building strength at home. 'We cannot have a military that is dependent on a manufacturing sector that is either on the other side of the ocean or south of the border.' Opinion: Great defence spending plan, Carney. It'd be a shame if Ottawa bureaucracy got in the way This push to be more self-sustaining is already playing out in actions taken by companies such as Seaspan, which recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Ontario-based Algoma Steel Inc. ASTL-T and Stigterstaal Canada. The partnership was formed specifically to assess the feasibility of Algoma supplying steel to Seaspan to contribute to the future of Canada's shipbuilding sector. Strategic partnerships beyond our own borders will also be a key part of the Defence Industrial Strategy. While the U.S. continues to make decisions around tariffs and its economy that serve itself, Ms. Joly said Canada is working with other countries and NATO members to become more connected. 'The test of this is actually the Defence Industrial Strategy because we will need to be working more with Europe on this, and obviously NATO, while continuing to understand that a lot of our companies are American-owned,' she said, referring to the fact that roughly 40 per cent of the 600 companies that make up Canada's industrial base are subsidiaries of U.S.-headquartered firms. Canada is open to foreign direct investment, she said, but not at the sacrifice of its own sovereign capabilities: 'We won't be an economy of subsidiaries. We will own IP and we will be able to lead the world.' Defence is a priority for this Liberal government because the world is a more dangerous place, Ms. Joly said, and Canada needs a military it can rely upon to defend itself.
Globe and Mail
30 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Bank staff play musical chairs with desks as return-to-office orders squeeze space
Bank employees are battling for desks and grappling with limited space in corporate towers, a situation that is likely to become even more heated as three of Canada's largest lenders barrel ahead with stricter return-to-office requirements. As employees at Royal Bank of Canada RY-T, Bank of Montreal BMO-T and Bank of Nova Scotia BNS-T will soon need to spend four days a week working in person with their teams, the banks could be forced to expand their real-estate footprints. Already, the scramble for space in Toronto has spurred a game of musical chairs at the big banks' corporate offices. Some employees say they are arriving at the office before 7 a.m. to secure a desk. Those that make it into the office at 9 a.m. either find they are unable to book a desk, or that the spot they secured has been taken over by a colleague, according to sources who work in the financial core. Those who arrive later are punted into meeting rooms or the cafeteria. In some cases, they are forced to seek out desk space in the bank's other office buildings or floors, separated from their teams. The Globe and Mail spoke with eight sources who are not being identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. John Turley-Ewart: Banks, if you want staff back in offices, give them proper offices to go back to In recent months, RBC, BMO and Scotiabank informed staff of the four-day mandate effective Sept. 15 – with Scotiabank levying the requirement on employees specifically in the Greater Toronto Area. The three banks are among Canada's largest employers, and set the tone for expectations around corporate culture and in-office attendance. Other lenders and major companies will likely follow their lead – driving more competition for corporate office buildings. 'The challenge is, if you're the fifth or the sixth bank to announce a return to the office four days a week, most of the best quality space for your employees will be spoken for at that point,' Colliers Canada senior vice president Nicholas Kendrew said in an interview. 'Then it's a case of working with what's left over.' The problem, though, is that high-quality towers are already nearing capacity of the newer towers with the best amenities, said Carl Gomez, head of market analytics at CoStar, a commercial real-estate information provider. 'The brand-new buildings are fully leased, and there is very little availability,' he said. Until more space is leased, staff are warning the space shortages will impede their ability to work efficiently from the office. Some employees are working at desks that do not have monitors, computer mice or keyboards, according to three sources. In some cases, two different teams share a floor of a building, alternating days in the office each week, according to two sources. Once four-day mandates take effect, one of those teams will need to be moved to a different space. With the stricter office mandates taking effect on Sept. 15, leaders at RBC and Scotiabank have told staff that they are searching for more office space to help address the lack of workspace, according to three of the sources. RBC said it has used a desk booking system since before the pandemic to provide employees with flexibility and choose a workspace that best suits their needs, depending on the day. 'As we prepare for in-office expectations in September, we're working closely with teams that may have real estate capacity issues to understand their needs and determine potential solutions,' RBC spokesperson Gillian McArdle said in a statement. Canadian employers take an increasingly harder line on returning to the office Shortly after Scotiabank notified staff of the new rules, it sent out an additional memo to certain teams informing them that the requirement would not apply to them until the bank secured more office space, according to one of the sources. 'In September, some of our teams who have the space to do so will increase the number of days they work onsite to four days, and others who are currently constrained by real estate availability will evolve to work onsite more as space allows it, with the goal of reaching four days onsite overtime across the bank,' Scotiabank spokesperson Katie Raskina said in a statement. BMO spokesperson Jeff Roman said in a statement that employees will work from the office four days a week 'where existing real estate capacity permits.' The banks are not the only companies dealing with the lack of space. A major non-bank financial institution that is bringing employees back to the office three days a week recently discovered that it has one desk for every two employees, Mr. Kendrew said. Canada's federal housing agency is also trying to accommodate a requirement to return to the office three days a week at its downtown Toronto office. Staff at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. are struggling to find a desk in Toronto, according to one source. 'We are currently reviewing our office space options in Toronto in order to accommodate our return to office directive,' CMHC spokesperson Brie Martin said in a statement. For the banks, the challenge is accessing the highest quality office space: newly built office towers that are close to the city's major transit hub and offer state-of-the-art infrastructure and amenities. That includes the first CIBC Square skyscraper, which serves as Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce's headquarters, Scotiabank's new office tower in the Bay Adelaide Centre and Toronto-Dominion Bank's TD Terrace. Data from commercial real-estate firms such as Colliers, CBRE and CoStar show tenants are shunning older office towers, even if they are close to Toronto's main train station. The availability rate – or the amount of space that is being marketed and available for lease – in CIBC's old headquarters at Commerce Court was 28.3 per cent as of mid-July. The older TD Centre office complex had an availability rate of 15.1 per cent, and Royal Bank Plaza office complex had an availability rate of 14.7 per cent, according to CoStar data. Scotiabank's previous main office at the red granite Scotia Plaza had an availability rate of 6.3 per cent. In contrast, the availability rate in the glitzy new buildings at CIBC Square and Scotiabank's new office tower was 0.5 per cent, according to CoStar data. TD Terrace had an availability rate of 4.9 per cent. The office vacancy crisis: Can older buildings compete? Overall, the availability rate for downtown Toronto offices was 14.9 per cent, which is about three times higher than prior to the start of the pandemic. Banks are now also competing with other large tenants looking for space. Fidelity Investments Canada ULC recently signed a large lease in TD Centre to accommodate a larger workforce for the investment fund manager, according to its spokesperson, Chris Pepper. Fidelity will vacate its current space near a major shopping mall and move into seven floors amounting to about 150,000 square feet next year. Technology has also become an important variable. Tenants now may need more closed-door office space now that video calls have become the norm. As well, office footprints have been shrinking with tech companies and other employers embracing open-concept offices. By 2019, the space asked for could be as small as 75 square feet per person at a co-working office or open concept office compared with 200 square feet per person in previous years. 'To get people back into the office after having been working from home for so long, it's going to be very tricky to get people to come back from their own workspace, to come in and sit on top of the employee or colleague next to them,' Mr. Kendrew said. As for new builds, there is little appetite to build more office skyscrapers in downtown Toronto. The cost of construction has increased since the pandemic, and investors are less interested in providing capital for a new tower with space still available to lease. A slew of new office space has also already flooded the market. Over the past few years, at least 11 downtown office towers have opened including the 49-storey CIBC Square and the 47-storey TD Terrace. TD and CIBC, which do not have a four-day mandate, did not comment on whether they plan to move to one. TD said its focus is to 'meet the needs of our colleagues and enable them to do their best work,' spokesperson Meghan Thomas said in a statement. In 2021, employees moved into the first of two towers at CIBC Square near Toronto's Union Station. CIBC said it plans to start moving into the second tower in 2026 and that it has sufficient space. 'We continue to have the space needed for our team and our model is working as evidenced by our business momentum and strong employee feedback,' CIBC spokesperson Tom Wallis said in a statement.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Ministers Island is latest tourist site planning to hand keys back to province
Ministers Island is the only tourist attraction in New Brunswick where visitors can drive across the ocean floor, but the tides of change threaten to overtake the historic site in Saint Andrews. The board of the charity that runs Ministers Island says it is unable to keep the popular attraction going with the $100,000 it receives for from the province for its operations budget. "We've tried everything and we've tried everything for 17 years," said John Kershaw, chair of the board of the Van Horne Estate on Ministers Island. "We've decided as a board that unless we get additional investment from the province, we are going to, in August, give six months' notice that we will not operate next year." Ministers Island, accessible only at low tide, was once owned by Sir William Van Horne, who was famous for getting the Canadian Pacific Railway built. With an admission ticket, visitors get to explore the island Van Horne once called his summer home. Popular attractions include the mansion, bathhouse, livestock barn, windmill and walking trails that cross the island from shore to shore. It is one of many historic attractions in Saint Andrews. Kershaw argues that similar historic sites in the province, including Kings Landing, receive significantly more provincial funding even though they attract comparable numbers of visitors. According to its annual report, Kings Landing gets $3.7 million as a provincial operating grant on top of other non-recurring grants from the province. "We just feel that that level of difference is just not fair," Kershaw said. These historic sites are both owned by the province and operated by external boards. Kings landing saw 34,000 visitors last year and Ministers Island saw 24,000. Does 10,000 more visitors justify millions more in funding? The New Brunswick government bought Ministers Island in 1977, and the island was declared a national historic site about 20 years later. Ever since the Van Horne Estate on Ministers Island was set up this century, every chair of the board "has been calling on the government to enhance our level of funding," Kershaw said. The board functions as a custodian for the island, overseeing operations for the province. Operational funding to the island increased to $130,000 from $33,000 in the 2019-2020 fiscal year, then moved down to $100,000 in 2020-2021, where it has stayed each year since. Funding for the island also comes from various donations and non-recurring grants. WATCH | 'We're not fiscally sustainable' Uncertain future for Ministers Island 35 minutes ago The board is only able to hire one full-time paid employee to oversee operations on the island. The rest of the work is stretched among volunteer board members and seasonal employees. Kershaw said this is not enough help to sustain the island. The Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture did not allow CBC News to interview Tourism Minister Isabelle Theriault and sent a statement instead. Despite the board's concerns, the statement said, the department is "committed to ensuring the continued conservation and public enjoyment of Ministers Island." "We renewed the funding that had been provided in previous years that Ministers Island received in the past," Premier Susan Holt said at a recent news when asked about the site's predicament. "At this point in time, the government doesn't have additional money to put more money into those heritage sites." Holt said that "the cost to operate is going up and that's leaving them with shortfalls. About $900,000 was cut from the provincial tourism budget in March. Not the first historical site to speak out The island's board is not the first to speak out about a lack of funding in New Brunswick. MacDonald Farm in Miramichi had to close because it didn't have the money to stay open. This historical site is also owned by the government but run by the Highland Society of New Brunswick at Miramichi. "We are a completely volunteer committee that operates this site and we just felt that having to fight to keep this site open is not something that we have the energy to do anymore," said society president Dawn Lamkey MacDonald. Impact on Saint Andrews tourism The lack of funding isn't just a worry for the Ministers Island board but also for the Explore Saint Andrews, the town's tourism marketing board. "Heritage and tourism is a big part of what draws people to Saint Andrews," said Explore Saint Andrews board member James Geneau. "I would argue that Minister's Island is an attraction that has lots of opportunity with a huge audience." Ganeau said that closing the island to tourists would have a significant impact on tourism that Saint Andrew's economy desperately depends on. "Losing that is going to be significant in terms of the overall offering that Saint Andrews can provide to tourists," Geneau said. "It's part of a broader offering which makes the area a destination for not just a night, but multiple days." Saint Andrews tourism works as a collective cluster with neighbouring sites such as the Huntsman Marine Science Center, Algonquin Golf Course, and the Blockhouse supporting each other, drawing visitors to stay in town for longer.
