Business Retention and Expansion Final Report - City of Brantford

28Future PlansFirms were asked a number of questions in relation to the future plans of their business over the next 3 years. Firms hadthe opportunity to select one of five responses, which included: remain the same, expand, relocate, downsize or close(Table 3).Table 3: Future plans to be undertaken over next three yearsAction to be Undertaken Count PercentRemain the Same 126 53.4%Expand 86 36.4%Relocate 21 8.9%Downsize 2 0.9%Close 1 0.4%Total 236 100%Overall, 89% of the firms indicate that they will remain the same (53%) or expand (36%). Business relocation rankedthird highest, accounting for approximately 9% of the responses. Of these, 90% (19 respondents) state that they will berelocating within their community as a result of inadequate building space (27%), a change in markets (17%), expansionlimitations (13%), and/or head office decisions (13%). Only 1.3% of the firms indicate that they will either downsize (2firms) or close (1 firm)-due to retirement.More than have of the firms (56%) indicating that a building expansion was in the near future cited innovation as abasis for their decision, with 83% of the firms planning to invest in new equipment to achieve this initiative.The expansion of these firms is expected to lead to additional services for customers (82%), an increased workforce(79%), increased floor space (60%), additional investment in equipment and technology (60%) and an increaseddemand for skills training (35%). Forty-two percent of firms reporting an expansion is in the foreseeable future areexperiencing difficulty with their expansion plans. These difficulties include: Financing, developing a marketing plan,labour force training, labour availability and water infrastructure. From a financial standpoint, cash, private investmentsand lines of credit are cited as the main revenue streams for expansion undertakings.Business DevelopmentThe business development portion of the survey focused on three main areas: location, markets and financialinformation.LocationIn terms of location, firms were asked to rate their level of satisfaction with their current site and specify which issueswere impacting on their satisfaction. Overall, 57% of firms indicate that they are completely satisfied with their site,while the remaining businesses are somewhat satisfied (33%), somewhat dissatisfied (7%) and very dissatisfied (3%).Reasons for dissatisfaction included: site being too small (34%), location is inconvenient for customers (29%), noopportunity for expansion (25%), business taxes (22%) and condition/general appearance of building/site (21%).“Parking availability of downtown Paris, and cleanliness of our community.” - Brant County Business OwnerIn terms of energy use, the vast majority of firms use electricity/hydro (99.5%) and natural gas (81%) for theiroperations. Less intensive energy uses include propane (10%), fuel oil (7.5%), bio-diesel (1%) and wind (0.5%).