TWO NORTHWEST businesses operating in Terrace won at the Northern BC Business and Technology Awards presentation last week in Prince George.
CityWest, owned by the City of Prince Rupert, and which provides cable television, internet and phone service, was named Technology Provider of the Year.
And Coast Tsimshian Resources was won the Aboriginal Business Award.
The annual awards take place in conjunction with the BC Natural Resource Forum and Economic Summit and Business and Technology Show held in Prince George.
CityWest, which celebrated its 100th birthday in 2010, began life as Prince Rupert’s phone company. In the past 20 years it has expanded not only beyond the boundaries of Prince Rupert but has added cable television and internet to its services. It has also recently expanded phone service to Terrace and to Kitimat.
Coast Tsimshian Resources is owned by the Lax Kw’alaams band on the north coast and exports whole logs through a log yard in Terrace.
In the last year the company set up a debarker in Prince Rupert as a mechanical way of stripping logs of bark and bugs to make it easier to export to China.
Its goal is to move beyond export and develop a woods processing industry in the northwest.
Coast Tsimshian Resources last year signed a deal with a Vancouver company to provide the land on which to build a plan to convert waste wood into a coal-like substance for export to Europe.