Protein Industries Canada’s federal funding extended for five years

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This article was published 13/02/2023 (995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Protein Industries Canada (PIC) has had its federal funding approved for another five years along with the four other national superclusters, but this time PIC has received more relative the other superclusters.

The Regina-based agricultural-industries focused group received $150 million. Only the Advanced Manufacturing Cluster received more, at $177 million.

When the first round of funding from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada was announced in 2018, advanced manufacturing, and artificial intelligence received more than PIC.

“It is a testament to the fact that the federal government sees long-term growth in the sector,” said Bill Greuel, the CEO of Protein Industries Canada.

This renewed investment brings the total funding to PIC to $353 million from 2018 through to 2028, including $30 million through the Pan Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy.

In its first five years PIC co-invested $173 million into 55 projects leveraging $304 million in private investment and helped companies leverage a further $234 million in follow-on investment. Among other things, PIC provided financial support for the development of Winnipeg’s Merit Functional Foods.

It is expected to contribute $15 billion in GDP and create 10,800 direct and indirect jobs by 2031.

Greuel said the next round of investments PIC makes will likely focus more on ingredient manufacturing and less on the front end things like breeding, agronomy and digital technologies.

“We are going to rebalance our portfolio,” Greuel said. “We are going to focus much more on ingredient manufacturing and the connection between ingredient manufacturing and consumer-ready products.”

The new funding is going to let PIC — which has about five staffers based in Manitoba — support continued innovation, scale-up of companies and the commercialization of new products in Canada’s plant-based food, feed and ingredient sector.

The goal is to make the protein sector a $25 billion industry by 2035.

François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry, said the clusters have had positive impacts by fostering collaboration across Canada’s innovation ecosystem. “They are supporting hundreds of groundbreaking projects and creating thousands of well-paying jobs,” he said. “We will continue to double down on spurring innovation and strengthen Canada’s position as a global innovation leader.”

Greuel said the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine has heightened awareness of the need and importance for this as a strategy for Canada.

The disruption of the global food supply chain highlighted the fact that Canada does not have a lot of domestic food processing.

“The more we can support what our members are doing in PIC, the more self-sufficient we will be from a food production standpoint, said Greuel. “The war in Ukraine disrupted that supply chain and Canada — with all of the access to land and a very stable geo-political environment, a fairly secure energy supply and cost — is really coming to the forefront as a very safe and secure place for ingredient manufacturers to invest in infrastructure here.”

Protein Industries Canada will be opening up its official funding program next week.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca