SUISSE News Spring 2024
Business
Business
April 2024
SBH Swiss List
(Swiss Business Hub )
The Hub has had a busy and rewarding start to the year. After over a year of diligent work, the Hub is delighted to release the first edition of our report on Swiss-based businesses in Canada. The Hub has identified a total of 322 Swiss-based businesses operating in Canada, employing 54’000 people across the country. This is the first time that such a comprehensive work has been carried out. It was impressive to find out that Swiss-based companies have such a strong presence across Canada. The bulk of the mapped Swiss-based companies are located in and around Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver. It was further possible to categorize those businesses into twelve different broad sectors, with prevalent clusters in areas such as precision manufacturing, life sciences and ICT.
The Hub was recently in Toronto for the PDAC Convention and had fruitful exchanges with Swiss and Canadian participating companies as well as representatives from Canadian provinces and territories. The Hub could also further deepen our knowledge about this key industry from insightful technical tracks dealing among others with decarbonization. This is the largest mining convention in the world and a testimony to the opportunity in this sector in Canada. Now, the Hub is in the process of compiling a thorough study on mining to further delve into the opportunities for Swiss companies.
On April 23rd and 24th a delegation of 10 Canadian companies will be attending the Swiss Biotech Days in Basel. This is the second year in a row that the Hub partnered with the Canadian Embassy in Bern to orchestrate this delegation and has seen significant growth year over year. The Canadian companies will also have an opportunity to join a side program where they can visit Swiss Innovation Parks across the country.
Next up, in June, the Hub will be back in Toronto to attend the Collision Conference where they will have the opportunity to meet many Swiss companies who will attend in hopes of entering the Swiss market and also seek out innovative Canadian companies to pitch Switzerland as a destination for European Expansion. This is the third year the Hub has attended this event and will have added inputs from partners who will join from Greater Zurich Area and Switzerland Global Enterprise.
The Hub looks forward to continuing to support and grow trade and invest flows between Switzerland and Canada.
