Grant: Technology Access Centre

Canada's food processing industry is the largest manufacturing sector in the country, providing more jobs than the transportation and machinery manufacturing sectors combined. From field to fork, the sector is responsible for more than 9% of national GDP and 2.3M jobs, roughly 13% of all Canadian jobs. Torontos food and beverage cluster dominates the Ontario food industry. Although over 25,000 food industry-related companies, organizations and agencies are located within 80km of Toronto, there is no facility in the GTA meeting industry needs in areas such as production, food safety, storage, packaging, labelling and getting products speedily to market. The absence of such a facility is a barrier to sector growth, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. To fill this gap, George Brown College (GBC) proposes to create the Food Innovation and Research Studio (FIRSt). FIRSt will provide food product concept to commercialization technical support and business innovation services to the GTA food industry. FIRSt builds on the GBCs extensive experience serving the food industry through its training, applied research and product development activities. The Studio will integrate an expert food science applied research, recipe and product development team with cutting edge research laboratories, test kitchens and equipment. Via FIRSt, industry clients will be able to swiftly and cost-effectively develop and commercialize new food products.