Surrey is one of the fastest-growing business centres in British Columbia, and the numbers show it: the city issued 12,090 commercial and industrial business licences in 2024 alone, up from 10,633 the year before, bringing the total to 24,230 licensed businesses citywide. That's part of a longer trend — total business licences in Surrey have grown 37% since 2018. Growth like that creates opportunity, but it also creates friction: more competitors in your district, more paperwork moving through the same permitting and licensing counters, and more pressure to run lean while everyone else is scaling up too.
That growth isn't evenly spread. Newton alone accounts for 8,491 business licences — 35% of the city's total — making it the densest commercial hub in Surrey, while Whalley/City Centre, Guildford, Cloverdale and Campbell Heights Business Park each carry their own concentration of activity. Construction remains the city's single largest sector by licence count, representing 21% of all licences (4,365 businesses), and Campbell Heights alone spans roughly 1,900 acres, hosts about 495 businesses, and employs more than 12,600 people across logistics, e-commerce fulfillment, and manufacturing. Add in the more than 475 farms that make up roughly a third of Surrey's land base, and the health technology cluster building around Innovation Boulevard, Fraser Health Authority, Surrey Memorial Hospital, and the talent pipelines from KPU and SFU Surrey — and it's clear this city runs on a genuinely diverse economic base, not one dominant industry.
Running a business here also means absorbing real cost pressure. Commercial property tax rates in BC already sit at close to three times the residential rate, and some Surrey commercial and industrial property owners have seen cumulative increases as high as 150% over three years — on top of a proposed 9.5% tax hike tied to the city's transition to the Surrey Police Service. Layer on business-targeted vandalism, break-ins and theft, loitering and litter that discourage foot traffic in retail districts, and a labour market stretched thin by rapid population growth, and the margin for error for a small or mid-sized business shrinks fast.
That's where we come in. EduWeb Consulting is an AI-first software, web and automation studio — we build the websites, custom software, and AI-driven automation that let Surrey businesses do more with the staff and budget they already have, whether you're quoting jobs out of Cloverdale, fulfilling orders out of Campbell Heights, or managing patient intake near Surrey Memorial Hospital.