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ALBERTA, AND ONTARIO INNOVATION BOOSTER RECIPENTS ARE DEVELOPING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE FOOD SAFETY AND SUSTAINABILITY
The Innovation Booster funding recipients are:
Project Title: From purees to powders: Using rescued foods for healthy soups
Project Lead: Trendi Tech Inc. (Burnaby, BC)
Description: This project will demonstrate new avenues for repurposing ingredients through the evolution of The Smoothie Machine — a healthy and automated vending solution that will offer fresh fruit smoothies and hot soup options to create a full circle economy utilizing upcycled fruits and vegetables.
Project Title: Nutrimeals Personalized Nutrition Platform — Beta Prototype Development
Project Lead: Nutrimeals (Calgary, Alberta)
Description: This project will advance the competitiveness of Canada’s food business by developing a platform which leverages AI to provide healthy, ready-to-eat meals that are customized to each customer’s dietary needs. By digitizing the e-commerce platform and logistics model, Nutrimeals will be able to seamlessly deliver hyper localized fulfillment across Canada.
Project Title: Automated Solid State Fermentation Incubator for Canadian pulse-based Tempeh products
Project Lead: Henry’s Tempeh (Kitchener, ON)
Description: This project seeks to fully develop an automated turn-key tempeh incubator system that can easily scale to produce industrial quantities of tempeh, with a focus on fermenting Canadian pulses into tempeh products.
Project Title: BioTagging grain for transformative digitization and traceability in commodity food supply chains
Project Lead: Index Biosystems Inc. (Toronto, ON)
Description: Index Biosystems Inc. uses biotechnology to turn baker’s yeast into microscopic barcodes called BioTags, which create a secure link between a product and its supply chain data. In this pilot project, Index is partnering with industry to optimize an automated BioTag application system to tag and trace grain throughout the supply chain.
The Innovation Booster is administered by CFIN and supported by the Government of Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund. CFIN received 27 applications from organizations based in 16 cities across Canada including Port Coquitlam, Calgary, Edmonton, Kitchener, Quebec City, and Halifax.
The next round of Innovation Booster funding opened July 20, 2022, and applications are due by September 12, 2022. The intake will focus on projects addressing Food Ecosystem Sustainability, which includes development and innovation across these areas:
· food waste reduction
· higher value recovery
· circularity and upcycling
· green and smart packaging
· more efficient use of inputs including energy, water and carbon
Applicants must be members of the Canadian Food Innovation Network. Membership is free and open to anyone in the Canadian food sector.
“The CFIN team is energized by innovative activity we’re seeing nationally as demonstrated in the applications received for the booster. This further validates the need to support and invest into Canadian food innovation and continue to catalyze activity in the food sector. These four winning projects are demonstrating impactful solutions that will reduce food waste, improve food safety, and digitize our supply chains, which will provide direct benefits for companies and consumers coast-to-coast,” said Joseph Lake, CEO, Canadian Food Innovation Network.
RELEVANT LINKS
Innovation Booster program:
https://www.cfin-rcia.ca/programs/booster
CFIN Membership:
