Grant: Technology Access Centre

Canada's food processing industry is the largest manufacturing sector in the country, responsible for more*than 9% of national GDP and 2.3M jobs. The 113,395 companies and farms that make up Ontarios food*industry support 726,200 jobs and $85.2 billion in annual revenue. Toronto is the second largest food*producing region in North America, after Los Angeles. More than half of Ontarios food processing activities*take place within the Greater Toronto Area. George Brown Colleges Food Innovation and Research Studio*(FIRSt) supports product development in Ontarios food and beverage industry by integrating expert applied*research with cutting-edge research laboratories and test kitchens to ensure new food and beverage products*are developed and optimized in a timely, cost-effective and customer-focused manner. To date, FIRSt has*helped 131 clients develop 212 new products, optimize 235 existing products, move 52 products to market,*and provide 273 marketing research services. Over $16M has recently been invested in FIRSt infrastructure,*by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, the Canada Foundation for Innovation*and George Brown College, to enable the FIRSt to double the number of innovative products brought to*market and to expand its services to meet the evolving needs of clients. FIRSt is seeking renewed NSERC*TAC investment to expand services across the entire value chain, from concept and prototype development,*testing (sensory, qualitative, quantitative) and refinement, through to creating new manufacturing processes,*and expanding support for scale-up preparation assistance for commercialization.