Focusing on the long term

Over the past two years, we’ve been very purposeful about looking at our business from the perspective of sustainability and impact. We know that EDC’s long-term viability is tied to our customers’ sustained success and our ability to contribute meaningfully to Canada’s trade competitiveness. This mindset is changing how we work. Here are some examples: 

• We established new governance practices and changed our process for onboarding large-scale Canadian exporters and trade creation borrowers. Before engaging with companies at the transaction level, we review them for both financial and non-financial risks, as a way of getting to know them better, identifying where we can best support them, and assessing whether they meet our requirements and expectations. If a company is onboarded, a streamlined due diligence process can then be performed at the time of a transaction. 
• EDC provides a range of financial solutions to Canadian exporters across all sectors. Looking ahead, we plan to increase our focus on companies in new and emerging sectors where Canada has strong long-term prospects, as well as sectors where we can advance Canada’s progressive and inclusive trade interests. These are sectors like cleantech, advanced manufacturing and technology, where Canadian companies are innovating and developing future-forward solutions that are needed in both new and traditional industries. 
• So as not to replicate or compete with Canadian banks’ domestic products and services, we want to identify the truly unique solutions that only EDC can offer – financial products and services that fill gaps in the system or where private sector risk appetite is limited. For example, we can provide companies with growth capital to invest outside Canada, and we can invest in businesses looking for a long-term partner to help them grow internationally. Our unique value proposition, combined with our international risk appetite and extensive relationships, is changing our conversations with clients and enabling us to provide them with greater long-term value. 

Cleantech

As the world looks to a more sustainable future, interest in cleantech has risen sharply in recent years. Canada has numerous competitive and innovative cleantech companies in many sectors and they must look abroad for opportunities to grow. EDC is here to help them. Having identified cleantech as a corporate priority in 2012, we remain the largest financier of Canadian cleantech companies.

Over the years, we’ve helped these companies by adopting a broader risk appetite for this sector; creating a dedicated cleantech team; and adapting our approaches to address market gaps, provide much-needed access to capital and enhance Canada’s reputation in the global cleantech space. We support the ecosystem by working with exporters and collaborating with our government and Crown partners – namely, Business Development Bank of Canada, Canadian Commercial Corporation, Sustainable Development Technology Canada and the Trade Commissioner Service.

EDC also manages the $450 million envelope of project finance capital for clean technologies that was established in the federal government’s 2017 budget. In 2019, we were pleased to announce our support for Ecolomondo, a tire and waste recycling company. The $32.1 million project finance loan will allow Ecolomondo to build its first commercial plant that will treat end-of-life tires, in Hawkesbury, Ontario, creating approximately 40 direct jobs and bringing substantial economic benefits to the region.

Cleantech by the numbers