by Angela Lovell
If you want a richer human experience, Brandon might be the place to be.
Manitoba’s second city has seen huge growth over the past couple of decades – its population is now close to 55,000 (and projected to be 80,000 by 2040) – and with that has come a lot of diversity that has enhanced everything from recreation and cultural to educational and business opportunities. It’s not uncommon today for children to sing Happy Birthday to a classmate in nine different languages.
“Our community is growing more vibrant,” says Gerald Cathcart, Director of Economic Development Brandon. “We have a burgeoning demand for cricket pitches and soccer pitches that came along with our international community. They are entrepreneurial, and we now have stores where you can buy food and clothing from all over the world.”
The Brandon business community has also responded to the needs of newcomers by hiring multilingual employees, so they can do everything from applying for a mortgage to buying a car in their native language.
You will encounter a staunch community pride everywhere in Brandon, from newcomers to lifelong residents to business owners, and with good reason. The city has all the amenities of a much larger city – top class recreational facilities like the Keystone Centre, Sportsplex and the Riverbank Discovery Centre, post-secondary education through Assiniboine College and Brandon University, an agricultural research facility, art galleries, museums, theatres, a vibrant and diverse retail sector, and an ever-growing industrial base. But you can still get from one end of the city in about 15 minutes, you know your neighbours, and it has the overall feel of a more intimate, smaller community.
“We believe Brandon is the best place to raise a family in the country,” says Brandon Mayor, Jeff Fawcett. “The opportunities for children are significant here.”
But Brandon is also a good place to do business because of its location and people.
“Brandon is a good location, especially for manufacturing and primary agriculture or ag-related businesses because the raw materials are close by,” says Cathcart. “We have lots of available land for development, have a daily air service to Calgary, and we have good access to the US by road and rail if you are looking at shipping internationally.”
The city also has a strong, diverse and well-educated workforce. “Our numbers on people who have a certificate or higher in post-secondary education stand out,” Cathcart says. “And there are more people in the zero to 15 age group than there are in the 5 to 65 which is a key employment replacement number.”
Brandon’s growth is underpinned by its strong industrial sector that made more than $150 million in capital investments in 2024 alone. The sector is dominated by agricultural-related industries but it also has major companies in the transportation, medical, digital and communications, oil and gas and commercial manufacturing sectors.
Growth in the manufacturing workforce will be 12.7 percent by 2027 and in construction it will be up by 17 percent over the same period. This year the city issued more than double the number of building permits over last year. City’s industrial parks continue to expand with private sector investments in warehousing, commercial retail, advanced manufacturing, food processing and green energy sectors.
To support that industrial growth, Manitoba Hydro will expand capacity by 100 megawatts of power to the city by 2027.
“We are actively working to make sure we can capitalize on that new capacity,” Fawcett says, adding that the city is putting considerable investment into its infrastructure to help plan and manage future growth. That includes a $150 million upgrade to the water treatment plant.
“We have been very fortunate, like a lot of communities, to have lived off generations prior to us that invested a lot of money into big infrastructure projects that allowed our city to grow,” Fawcett says. “Now we are at the point we need to expand and refurbish and update some of that infrastructure so we can continue to grow and prosper.”
Driven by agriculture
Of course, Brandon is very much a community driven by agriculture, and it is home to some major companies that serve the sector including Maple Leaf Foods, Behlen Industries, Koch Fertilizer, and Manitoba’s largest dairy processor, Saputo Dairies. Other major businesses include MacKenzie Seeds and Chemtrade Chemicals Canada (a sodium chlorate manufacturer), Cando Rail Services and Pfizer, and Trans Canada Brewing is building a new facility in Brandon next year.
The Brandon Research & Development Centre is home to scientists engaged in agricultural research to benefit primary producers, and Assiniboine Community College has programs that support both primary agriculture and agri-business.
“Our internal business plan is focused on developing opportunities in value-added agriculture such as food processing, biomaterials and biofuels,” Cathcart says. An example is the Chemtrade plant currently vents hydrogen from its plant. “We are working to see if there is a solution for capitalizing on that hydrogen that is being vented,” he adds.
Managing growth
Continued growth and development remain a priority of the City’s Strategic Plan to 2026, along with addressing social needs. Fawcett would like to see a number of ongoing projects come to fruition during that time. They include the establishment of a medical school at Brandon University in partnership with the University of Manitoba and the completion of the Prairie Innovation Centre for Sustainable Agriculture at Assiniboine Community College. Brandon also desperately needs another high school, with the current ones at capacity.
But top of the Mayor’s personal priority list is to see Brandon become even more of a blended community. “I want to continue to see the diversity in our community flourishing and see more and more people start to blend together and be able to take advantage of all the opportunities that our community offers,” he says.
While every community seeks to bring in new, outside investment, the majority of investments are made by people who are already doing business there, and the spin-offs that come from that are huge and represent opportunities for future entrepreneurs and businesses.
“Koch Fertilizer told me recently that they have upwards of 40 contractors each and every day on site in addition to their 300 employees,” Cathcart says. “These are local millwrights, steel welders, instrumentation technologists. That is a huge opportunity for tomorrow’s entrepreneurs in servicing the gaps in our industrial base by providing the services that they have to bring in from somewhere else.”
Building a region
Brandon will continue to grow as the main city in south-western Manitoba and the province’s second city, but it will need to manage that growth, which it will do through strong partnerships, Fawcett says.
“Brandon has a collaborative approach with all our different groups and organizations in the city, but also externally, we work closely with the Province,” he says. “We are a regional hub, and we work with all the surrounding communities to build a stronger region together.”
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