Retail

Amazon is testing its delivery drones in B.C.

By Trevor Melanson /

Amazon Prime Air | BCBusiness

THE#BCBIZDAILY
Plus, Future Shop is dead and Brucejack is born

Amazon invasion
Amazon is testing its new unmanned delivery drones in B.C., according to a report from the Guardian, whose reporters visited the confidential test site, located somewhere “barely 2,000ft from the US border,” in-person. The Seattle-based company apparently grew fed up with regulatory hurdles barring it from testing its drones south of the border. Accordingly, Amazon went to Canada, where it’s been testing its drones for months with the Canadian government’s blessing. (via The Guardian)

 
Shops without a future
Future Shop is history, but its sister store will replace many of the shuttered outlets (Burnaby-based Best Buy owns Future Shop). Following the announcement this weekend that 66 Future Shops would be closed (and another 65 re-opened as Best Buys), nine local Future Shops have been permanently R.I.P.ed while another 13 will be rebranded as Best Buys and re-opened in the next week (see a list of local closures here). As part of these shutdowns, Future Shop laid off 500 full-time and 1,000 part-time employees.

Given the gold light
Pretium Resource’s $450-million gold mine has been given the green light by the B.C. government, making it the first new mine to go ahead since the Mount Polley tailings spill. The Brucejack Project, however, will not use a dam to contain its waste, half of which will be buried in the underground mine itself. The other half will be buried beneath Brucejack Lake.

What merger?
Vancouver-based mining company Teck Resources says it’s not in merger discussions with London’s Antofagasta to create a world-leading copper producer. An earlier report by Bloomberg had stated the two were in early merger talks, sending Teck’s share price soaring. Both companies denied the report Monday, with Teck saying that “it is not in discussions with Antofagasta in relation to any form of transaction, and there are no other corporate developments that justify any significant movement in its share price.”