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.