GBC Receives funding from FEDDEV Ontario for Food and Beverage Research

Yesterday saw the announcement of $7Min funding for Food and Beverage Labs at George Brown College from the Federal Economic Development Agency of Southern Ontario. The announcement was made by Wladyslaw Lizon, Member of Parliament for Mississauga East - Cooksville at Furlani's Foods, also a recipient of FEDDEV Ontario funding. 

The GBC investment is focused on expanding the Food Innovation Research Studio (FIRSt), an NSERC-funded Technology Access Centre, which for the past four years has led research in the food and beverage sectors. It is part of a $14M renovation at our Centre for Hospitality and Culinary Arts in our King Street East Culinary Innovation District.

The project will establish the following:

• Expand and enhance the Food Innovation and Research Studio’s operational capacity; 
• Create a Culinary and Large Quantity Lab to enable process and product development for scaling up and large batch manufacturing of new savoury food products; 
• Create a Bake and Large Quantity Lab to enable companies to develop large-scale baked goods manufacturing processes;
• Create a Beverage Research Lab to support product development, sensory testing, scale-up and launch for beverage-specific industries;
• Create an Industry Engagement and Interaction facility to support business-to-business food product introductions and launches; and
• Engage with SME food and beverage client companies to:
• Improve on or create new food and beverage products, including prototype development, testing, and refinement;
• Improve on or create new manufacturing processes; and
• Provide manufacturing scale-up preparation assistance.

Investments such as this are helping to encourage industry to invest in R&D and get new products and services to market. The Food Innovation Research Studio, one of GBC's flagship research labs, has been active in supporting the GTA Food and Beverage Cluster.