Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 2

Mama's Life Products Ltd. (MLP) is a Canadian family business company that wholesales and retails natural health and beauty products such as shea butter, black soap, essential oils and more throughout the country. While the company is experiencing rapid growth, it is faced with a method of producing shea butter, a staple ingredient in its products, that cannot keep up. Currently, this process is manual, which increases costs, increases raw material and reduces opportunities to optimize environmentally friendly practices, such as the opportunity to implement Industry 4.0., because the process is too slow. To maximize their support of people with weather and environment-inducing skin conditions (e.g., eczema, psoriasis, severe dry skin etc.), MLP will collaborate with Centennial College to automate the process of producing shea butter, the most popular product and ingredient with MLP consumers. The successful completion of this project will result in a tenfold increase in shea butter production - from 10kg to 400kg batches - and an exciting opportunity for MLP to accommodate its rapid growth by collaborating with more natural product outlets, retailers and companies in Canada and beyond.