GUELPH, ON, MAY 30, 2023 — The Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN) is investing $516,959 into six foodtech projects funded through the organization’s Innovation Booster Program. Industry will match these funds to create projects valued at just under $1M.
The Innovation Booster funding recipients are:
Project Lead: Impactful Health R&D (Nova Scotia)
Project Title: Pilot Coating Line
Funding: $100,000
Impactful Health R&D (IHRD) is developing sustainable active packaging to prolong the shelf life of raw proteins, starting with fresh fish. The Innovation Booster funding will help IHRD build and test a continuous film coating pilot line at their facilities in Nova Scotia, with the end goals of reducing food waste, limiting the reliance on traditional plastics, and increasing ROI for the entire value chain.
Their underlying technology, Actipack™, is a coating that is applied on the food-facing surface of packaging film to inhibit bacterial growth and extend product shelf life. Through this project, IHRD will increase the production capacity of their Actipack™ film, conduct more pilots with food processors and grocery retailers, and de-risk the scalability of their eco-friendly packaging solution.
Project Lead: CarbonGraph Inc. (Ontario)
Project Title: Enabling Automated Farm-to-Table Lifecycle Assessments in Canada
Funding: $96,358
CarbonGraph has developed a next-generation sustainability platform to automate lifecycle assessments of the environmental footprint of food products. After testing their platform with food companies across Canada, the Ontario-based startup is developing a new core functionality to automatically capture supply chain data from grocers and food distributors across thousands of individual products.
This new functionality will allow CarbonGraph to trace this data back to food manufacturers and ingredient suppliers to produce high-quality lifecycle assessments for individual products. This will give Canadian consumers more insight into the environmental impact of their dietary choices, while highlighting the sustainability advantage of choosing Canadian food products in global markets.
This Innovation Booster funding will enable CarbonGraph to pilot their enhanced platform with the country's largest food manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
Project Lead: Cibotica Inc. (British Columbia)
Project Title: Universal Food-Safe Dispensing Mechanism for Food Makelines
Funding: $90,741
Cibotica is developing a food-safe version of a universal dispensing mechanism and associated control algorithms to be used in their robotic salad and bowl makeline. The BC-based food tech company has already developed an ingredient-agnostic dispensing mechanism that’s capable of dispensing most ingredients regardless of their shape, size, and preparation method. The focus of this project is to ensure the dispensing mechanism is food-safe and optimized for performance using advanced control algorithms.
The successful completion of this project will optimize the speed, accuracy, and reliability of the robotic salad and bowl makeline used in many food service environments, leading to significant increases in productivity and efficiency.
Project Lead: Freshline (British Columbia)
Project Title: Innovating the Global Food Distribution Supply Chain
Funding: $83,908
Freshline is building out the core functionality of its new B2B e-commerce platform that will enable food distributors and retailers to transact online in ways that were not previously possible. Improvements include a turnkey integration management tool that allows suppliers to connect their ERP, accounting, inventory, or operations management platform to Freshline via API, webhooks, or FTP. Food distributors in Canada and the US will get access to a first-of-its-kind software that streamlines and automates manual sales and operations work.
Project Lead: New School Foods Inc. (Ontario)
Project Title: A Novel Process to Create Plant-based Fish That Flakes
Funding: $80,526.00
New School Foods had developed a proprietary food scaffolding technology to create whole-cut meat alternatives. Their first product is a whole-muscle, unbreaded plant-based salmon fillet that mimics the look, taste, and texture of conventional salmon. The raw salmon transforms when cooked from a translucent to an opaque product, the same way a traditional salmon fillet product does. The funding will be used to create novel equipment that can draw ‘white lines’ in the salmon to help improve this product by creating fillets that flake and closely emulate traditional salmon.
Project Lead: ABCO Industries Inc. (Nova Scotia)
Project Title: Experimental Validation and Verification of a Novel Blanching Process – Harnessing the Full Potential of Direct Steam Injection
Funding: $64,926
ABCO is a forerunner in the thermal blanching of vegetables, with their Heat & Hold Blancher being a system of choice for companies in over 45 countries. To assist their customers in achieving sustainability targets, ABCO is constantly seeking to reduce energy and water consumption required to operate their systems, while maintaining maximum yields and nutrition.
This project will enable ABCO to form the basis for commercializing a new blancher that uses a more efficient and effective steam process for heat delivery though the deployment of fans and the digitization of controls. This will result in reduced costs and increased returns for both the processor and consumer, while also creating a more sustainable and energy efficient blanching process.
CFIN’s Innovation Booster provides funding and support to SMEs to help them accelerate product development, overcome innovation hurdles, and validate market fit. During this fifth round of Innovation Booster funding, CFIN received 41 applications from across the country. In total, 23 Canadian foodtech companies have received $1,872,769 from this program since 2021.
Across all programs CFIN has approved $10.9M for 39 Canadian food innovation projects.
QUOTES
“These six projects showcase how diverse, innovative, and ambitious Canadian foodtech companies are. These startups are developing novel processes, creating first-to-market technologies, and tackling some of the biggest challenges facing our food sector. Food innovation is thriving across the country and we’re extremely excited about the global potential of these projects.”
– Dana McCauley
CEO, Canadian Food Innovation Network
“Innovation in Canada’s food industry is critical in order to create more sustainable ways to produce and distribute the food Canadians need. That’s why we continue to support Canadian Food Innovation Network and the initiatives they are putting forward as they will allow industries to optimize their supply chains and reduce their carbon foot-prints. Congratulation to all recipients, as they advance Canada’s food sector as an engine of development and bring forth innovation in this industry! ”
– The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne
Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry
" Canada's food sector is home to innovative companies that are transforming the way we produce, process, package and deliver food. These co-funded investments will bring Canada's worldclass foodtech sector to new heights and accelerate the deployment of novel processes to drive more efficient supply chains.”
– The Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau
Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food in Canada
"We are thrilled to receive the Innovation Booster funding from CFIN, which enables us to advance our revolutionary Actipack™ technology. Expanding our production capacity will propel IHRD into the next phase of growth. Together with CFIN, we are paving the way for a greener, healthier, and more economically viable food industry."
– Mina Mikhail
Founder and CEO, Impactful Health
"CarbonGraph's mission is to make sustainability easy, transparent, and profitable for Canada's food sector. After developing our platform and testing it at smaller scales over the last two years, CFIN's Innovation Booster program is taking CarbonGraph to the next level by providing the resources and opportunities to begin deploying our software at an industrial scale and putting accessible carbon footprint data in the hands of as many businesses and individuals as possible."
– Sam Anderson
Co-Founder and CEO, CarbonGraph
"Thanks to the funding from the Canadian Food Innovation Network, we are able to optimize our universal ingredient dispensing and portioning technology. This technology is capable of dispensing most ingredients regardless of their shape, size, and preparation method. This support will expedite the commercialization of our robotic makeline, which has the potential to solve the most prominent pain points and inefficiencies in the restaurant industry"
– Souroush Sefidkar
Founder and Co-CEO, Cibotica
"We are incredibly excited at Freshline to be backed by CFIN under the Innovation Booster program. We're very optimistic on our ability to use these funds to further advance the Canadian innovation landscape and are grateful to have this support."
– Robert Kirstiuk
Co-Founder and CEO, Freshline
“Our company is dedicated to creating no compromise meat alternatives for everyone to enjoy, and that starts with adding more tools to the production toolkit. We're using this funding to drive that mission forward as we continue exploring and developing new techniques to support the creation of realistic whole-cut meat and seafood alternatives across the industry."
– Chris Bryson
CEO and Founder, New School Foods
“With support from CFIN, ABCO will continue to innovate our food processing machinery through the development and commercialization of a more sustainable approach to thermal processing (i.e., less energy and water consumption). The result will benefit Canadian processors and consumers by lowering the cost to produce high quality product.”
– Jason Huskilson
VP Sales and Co-Owner, ABCO Industries
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
The Innovation Booster provides flexible and rapid support to Small or Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as they address food innovation challenges or technical hurdles that have created barriers to achieving their commercialization goals.
The Innovation Booster is administered by CFIN, which is supported by the Government of Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund.
ABOUT THE CANADIAN FOOD INNOVATION NETWORK
The Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN) is a national, member-based organization that’s stimulating transformative and transferrable innovation across the Canadian food sector. We connect the Canadian food ecosystem to fresh insights, ideas, and technologies to elevate their business and increase their innovation capacity. You can become a CFIN member (for free!) in less than five minutes.
RELAVENT LINKS
Innovation Booster
CFIN Membership
CFIN Media Page
MEDIA CONTACT
Jamil A. Karim
Communications Director
Canadian Food Innovation Network
Jamil@cfin-rcia.ca