We’re back with another inspiring episode of the Heizer/ Render/ Munson OM Podcast. In this episode, Barry Render sits down with Canadian entrepreneurs Katie Wookey and Ari Davis, co-founders of Simpla Foods, a plant-based yogurt company that’s redefining sustainability and supply chain innovation in the food industry.
Ari Davis and Katie WookeyBarry Render
Barry explores how Katie and Ari turned a personal health journey into a thriving business now sold in over 300 stores across Canada. The couple shares their experience with co-packing and contract manufacturing, explaining how outsourcing production has allowed them to scale efficiently while staying focused on product development and sustainability.
Have you subscribed to this podcast on Apple Podcasts? Just open your Apple Podcasts app, search “Heizer Render Munson OM Podcast,” and subscribe to get all our episodes delivered straight to your device!
The pace of the global transition to electric vehicles depends on the future of a remote region in Canada known as the Ring of Fire. Located underneath a distant, swampy expanse in Northern Ontario that is cut off from major roads, the Ring of Fire is seen as one of the world’s most important untapped sources of nickel, copper and cobalt—metals essential for making the batteries that power EVs.
But the precious commodities are buried under a vast ecosystem of peat bogs that hold more carbon per square foot than even the Amazon rainforest. Digging them up could trigger the release of more greenhouse gas than Canada emits in one year, turning one of the earth’s biggest carbon sinks into a major source of emissions.
“If I have to hop on a bulldozer myself, we’re going to start building roads to the Ring of Fire,” said the head of Ontario province, which recently signed deals with automakers VW and Stellantis to build battery-making factories in the province. Opponents warn that disturbing the area could have far-reaching consequences.
The Ring of Fire, an area larger than Rhode Island, was formed 3 billion years ago. A retreating ice sheet left sodden, boggy terrain that covers a wealth of minerals. This deposit is “the most valuable nickel deposit, undeveloped, in the world,” said one mining CEO. “We’re not going to be able to switch off fossil fuels, which are destroying the planet, unless we have abundant supplies of nickel.” He estimates the deposits of platinum, palladium, copper and chromite could be worth $67 billion. As EV production has increased, demand has surged for such metals, which are key components in making EVs and military equipment.
Projects like the Ring of Fire represent a new era for the mining industry. Long considered a dirty and often unfortunate legacy of the industrial economy, mining has taken on a green sheen. Extraction is an essential component of the global movement toward electrification.
International giants are investing billions of dollars in Canada’s EV and mining sectors
Multinational companies are pumping billions of dollars into Canada’s electric-vehicle manufacturing sector, lured by government incentives, access to raw materials and cheap renewable energy. VW just announced that it had chosen a site in Ontario to build its first battery-cell plant outside Europe, citing Canada’s natural resources as one of the reasons. VW’s plan follows recent EV and battery-making project investments by GM, Stellantis, Michelin Tires, Brazilian miner Vale, U.K. mining company Rio Tinto, and German chemicals company BASF, among others.
Canada is among the most expensive countries in the world to build cars and the highest-cost market for car assembly in the North American free-trade zone. To save money, auto makers in recent decades moved thousands of manufacturing jobs and motor-vehicle assembly capacity to Mexico, dropping auto employment in Canada from 175,000 to 110,000.
The Canadian government is pitching itself as a counterweight to China in the race to develop EV technology. China leads the world in processing metals and minerals like nickel, copper, lithium and cobalt. It also is home to 78% of the world’s cell-manufacturing capacity for EV batteries. Helping Canada’s pitch: It is one of the few places in the Western Hemisphere with the raw materials companies need to make their EVs. Electra Battery Minerals Corp. is the only facility available in North America for processing battery-grade cobalt, a metal used in batteries. Rio Tinto is upgrading an iron-ore and titanium refining facility in Quebec with a $500 million investment.
Access to hydroelectricity was a key reason GM and others chose Quebec. The renewable power helps lower GM’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Quebec also offers the lowest industrial rates for power in North America.
Classroom discussion questions:
Summarize the reasons more companies in this field are looking to Canada.
What is China’s strength in the EV supply chain industry?
When Israeli-born author Ayelet Tsabari first immigrated to Canada in 1998, a strange sight caught her eye on the sidewalks of Vancouver. Beneath every Canadian bus stop sign, as if commanded by an invisible drill sergeant, citizens young and old automatically formed into neat, ordered lines. “I was wondering, ‘Why are people standing like that?’” she said. And the phenomenon is not only baffling to Israelis, writes Canada’s National Post (July 25, 2014). Ms. Tsabari described bonding with an Iraqi friend over the “foreign and strange” practice.
But from Russia to China to Italy to the entire Middle East, there are billions of people around the world who are genuinely confused by the penchant of English-speaking people to constantly form into queues. At the Canadian School of Protocol and Etiquette, lineup training comes on the same day students are taught about North American-style introductions. Students are taught where to line up, how to maintain one’s proper place in the lineup and — most importantly — how close to stand. “In certain cultures, queue etiquette is just not on the radar,” said the school director. Particularly among students from China and the Middle East, Canadian queuing norms simply would not jibe with the crowded train stations and marketplaces of their home countries.
Non-queuing in China
In China, queue-jumping is so widespread that in the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Chinese Communist Party began posting queue monitors to city streets and establishing “Queuing Days” each month in which citizens were asked to “voluntarily wait in line” at shops and transit stations. Similar anti-queuing norms hold in India, where the simple act of boarding a train can become the scene of a miniature stampede. “We live in a hugely-populated, resource-constrained country … in this environment, he who hesitates is lost for sure,” wrote a New Delhi writer in a 2012 piece for the Wall Street Journal.
Classroom discussion questions:
1. What is the US culture with regard to queues?
2. Why is the psychology of queuing so different across the globe?
