Supporting Canada's Superclusters

SUPPORTING CANADA'S Superclusters

How does a country benefit from developing an innovation cluster system?

Research has consistently shown that having strong innovation clusters translates into more competitive industrial sectors and higher economic output. A country can have many informal clusters — or formal clusters — but no overarching national cluster program. Australia, Mexico, and partially the US are great examples of this. Increasingly, however, countries are realizing they need to compete differently, and develop national — or federal — cluster programs. Norway, Denmark, Germany, and Canada are great example here.

In short, having competitive clusters translates into a more robust, thriving, and future-fit economy.

You discuss local vs. global clusters. How is an environment of innovation and collaboration met with both (and possibly working together)?

Most clusters start very local, then slowly grow into a regional, national, and in some cases, an international cluster. At the local level, clusters are built around strong, local networks with high levels of trust. At the global level, these networks of trust usually need time and investment to grow. One example is the Swedish tech ecosystem; there are immensely strong network effects between Sweden and Silicon Valley, where a lot of Swedish tech companies have been able to find partners, customers, and funding through these networks.

How can demand-driven innovation through clusters solve the world’s toughest problems faster and better?

There’s little doubt that clusters have the capacity to be true engines of innovation and economic development. Focussing on demanddriven innovation ensures we’re working to solve real challenges, with real market applications. Globally today, clusters are truly racing to compete to solve some of our biggest problems within energy transition, health, and education.

I’m thrilled to see the strategic leadership by the Canadian government and their ambitious cluster program. The world is looking to Canada here — many countries are trying to copy Canada’s playbook to develop their version of the global cluster program.

Canada’s agriculture system is one of the most sustainable in the world — economically, socially, and environmentally — thanks to sound management practices, and innovative practices and technologies. These innovations are the result of successful collaborations between government, academic, and industry partners

The Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS) was founded in 2012 in a partnership between Nutrien, the Government of Saskatchewan, and the University of Saskatchewan (USask). It works with partners across the entire food production value chain — including governments, industry, aca -

demia, and producers — to discover, develop, and deliver innovative solutions for the production of globally sustainable food.

Harnessing AI

Recently, GIFS partnered with Protein Industries Canada (PIC), one of Canada’s five Global Innovation Clusters, and other partners to advance Canada's National Index on Agri-Food Performance. Together with PIC, Precision.AI and other industry partners, they also collaborated on a project to create new ways to spray weeds or other pests in a targeted way. They developed a precision artificial intelligence (AI) pesticide system that increases the efficient use of pesticides

while maintaining crop yield.

“The aim is to develop new ways to spray weeds or other pests in a targeted way,” says Ian Stavness, GIFS Enhancement Chair and Program Director for the Plant Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre, which is managed by GIFS at USask.

“At GIFS, we recognize the value of collaboration,” says Steve Webb, GIFS’ CEO. “By joining forces with PIC and other partners on this exciting project, we’re developing innovative technologies to precisely target crop inputs only when and where needed, making production agriculture more efficient and more economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable.”

Tania Amardeil

Ian Stavness

Steve Webb CEO, GIFS

Christian Rengen

The Global Innovation Clusters: A Canadian Economic Success Story

As Canada completes five years of the Global Innovation Clusters program, each cluster has seen unprecedented innovation and industry collaboration that continues to support economic development and growth.

Collaborating Towards a Clean Global Economy with Break-Through Technologies In Critical Minerals

Critical minerals are the building blocks for the green digital economy. The Digital Global Innovation Cluster is investing in teams of Canadian companies who are driving ‘world first’ innovations in the critical minerals sector to support the energy transition that the world needs.

A key player in Digital’s Earth X-Ray for Low-Impact Mining project is Ideon Technologies, a BC-based company pioneering world-leading mining technologies that accelerate the transition to sustainable, low-impact mining. The Earth X-Ray project will allow mining companies to identify the density and quality of critical minerals up to one kilometer beneath the Earth’s surface, reducing ‘hit-and-miss’ drilling and the environmental

impacts associated with it. Increased visibility and locational accuracy will also reduce costs and increase yields across the mining industry value chain.

The Earth X-Ray project is accelerating Canada’s competitiveness in the global mining industry, creating export potential and driving GDP growth. Thanks to Digital’s involvement, Ideon is accelerating its product roadmap, growing its intellectual property (IP) and establishing new commercial partnerships.

The Digital Supercluster is working with innovators, researchers, industry leaders and potential customers to support the development and scaling of technologies that will expand Canada’s global leadership in every element of the critical mineral supply chain.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a central piece for the green transformation of our industries.

With AI, Canadian organizations are now equipped to work smarter by gaining more visibility on their demand and on their supply chain. Real-time data can help them increase performance in their day-to-day operations and mitigate their impact on the environment. Through AI, they can optimize production, avoid downtimes, minimize waste, and reduce the need for transport of goods and people. In its own way, each AI-powered project can help reduce our industries’ carbon footprint.

As AI is gaining in popularity, more and more busi-

nesses wish to leverage this technology for their green transformation. That’s where Scale AI comes in to play to de-risk AI projects and support planet-friendly innovation.

An example of this is Quebec-based OPTEL, who partnered with a consortium of five major players in the AI and mining industries, in order to transform the supply chain for the minerals and metals sector. Thanks to Scale AI’s support, this project successfully enabled the digitization of the sector’s value chain, which allowed for the stakeholders to gain precious insight on each element of the supply chain, including its socioenvironmental impact, in order to make better decisions to optimize performance while improving environmental sustainability.

Greening Marine Shipping

Ninety per cent of the world’s goods are moved on the ocean and this is steadily growing with the increased demand for ocean trade. Marine shipping is also a major source of emissions contributing almost three per cent of the world’s total carbon output with marine shipping in Canada generating more than one billion tonnes of carbon emissions each year. Finding new ways to optimize vessel efficiencies and transition away from carbon-intense fuels is critical in greening marine shipping and helping deliver on Canada’s net-zero ambitions.

It’s through investment in new technology and innovation that Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is helping accelerate a full spectrum of solutions that provide opportunities to significantly reduce emissions now

Making Canada’s Agriculture Sector More Sustainable — From Farm to Fork

Canada’s agricultural sector has a long track record of embracing innovation to improve productivity and decrease their environmental footprint. Today, the industry is looking for ways to improve on-farm efficiency and reduce inputs.

Over the past two years, partners Precision AI, Sure Growth Solutions, Exceed Grain Marketing, and the Global Institute for Food Security, with the support of Protein Industries Canada have worked together to develop new spraying technology that uses artificial intelligence to detect and spray weeds in fields. With its potential to significantly reduce crop inputs such as water and pesticides and lessen the number of machin-

ery passes over each field, the technology will lower farmers’ input costs while helping the sector reach its environmental sustainability goals.

Designed by Canadians for Canadian farmers, the technology will address the needs of our country’s plant-based value chain first and foremost. It can, however, be used anywhere in the world, providing an opportunity for the partners to commercialize their new, Canadian-developed intellectual property in the international market. All combined, the new sprayer technology will help make primary production of Canada’s protein crops more sustainable both economically and sustainably while helping meet the growing global demand for protein.

as work continues towards longer-term, carbon neutral solutions. This includes innovative transitionary fuels for vessels that require no retrofitting and deliver immediate emissions reductions — Canada’s first renewable diesel from agriculture and forestry by-products; non-toxic vessel coatings that reduce fuel consumption and radiant noise underwater — increased battery storage capabilities that make electrification of larger vessels such as ferries more viable; and leveraging other new ocean technologies for more efficient operations.

Opportunity lies ahead where solutions created for greener marine shipping are not only instrumental to contributing to a healthier planet, but also helps unlock the potential of a sustainable blue economy, and generates significant market opportunities in the process.

Cement-Free, Carbon-Negative Concrete

Concrete is the most consumed substance on Earth after water, but the production of its key ingredient, cement, accounts for eight per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. CarbiCrete’s process for the production of precast concrete replaces cement in concrete with industrial by-products like steel slag and cures it with carbon dioxide, avoiding the GHG emissions associated with cement production, while permanently sequestering carbon dioxide (CO2) within the resulting concrete products. For every ton of concrete produced using this process, 150kg of CO2 are abated/removed.

In partnership with NGen, CarbiCrete, and its project partners Patio Drummond and Innovobot Labs have

embarked on an $8 million project to develop the world’s first commercially available carbon-negative concrete blocks. The industrial implementation of CarbiCrete’s advanced manufacturing process will occur at hardscape manufacturer Patio Drummond’s precast facility in Drummondville, Quebec. Project partner Innovobot Labs will build a software platform to collect data for production validation, tracking, analysis, and optimization so that the process can be easily implemented in any precast concrete plant.

Once the CarbiCrete process is fully optimized, it'll position Canada as the undisputed world leader in sustainable concrete, enabling the partners to meet the rapidly growing global demand for sustainable building materials.

AI as a Crucial Driver for the Green Transformation of our Industries

Anchor companies drive economic growth, create jobs, build communities and contribute significantly to Canada’s GDP,” says Sue Paish, CEO of the Digital Global Innovation Cluster, (Digital), based in Vancouver. “We have exceptional small companies in Canada — and lots of them. We must create an environment that drives their growth into anchor enterprises. This is what we do at Digital.”

Accelerating economic growth and prosperity

According to Paish, by focussing innovation on solving some of society’s and industry’s biggest challenges, leveraging the ingenuity of innovators, and combining that with large enterprise experience, we create environments for small companies to grow — accelerating economic growth and prosperity. This is demand-driven ‘collaborative innovation’. Digital uses this model to build Canadian-made digital solutions to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges, such as improving access to health systems and driving to net-zero by decarbonizing natural resources sectors. At the same time, Digital is transforming skilling and training for thousands of Canadians for careers in the digital world.

Made in Canada: A global impact Canada can lead the world in digital innovations that advance human health, protect environmental health, and deliver highly skilled talent. Digital’s model marries private commercialization power with academic institutions, which enables collaboration and fills gaps in organizational capacity. This model creates a community where small enterprises grow into world recognized leaders.

For example, Toronto-based DNAstack, who creates software that powers breakthrough discoveries in oncology, neuroscience and rare diseases, has accelerated its growth by being a member of Digital’s network. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was able to share genomic information globally and is now poised to use that same technology to better understand genetic disorders, such as autism. “We’re building an anchor company based in Canada, with global impact,” says Marc Fiume, CEO of DNAstack. “Working with the Supercluster created the launchpad to export our technology internationally.”

Fiume acknowledges that DNAstack wouldn’t have been as impactful or have been able to grow without the Digital Cluster. Staffing has tripled and revenues have increased five-fold since it joined Digital’s membership. Earlier this year, DNAstack was recognized on the international stage by the World Economic Forum as one of its “Technology Pioneers”, a distinction given to 100 early-to-growth-stage companies that are involved in innovation and are poised to have significant impact on business and

society. DNAstack was one of two Canadian companies to receive this honour.

Earlier this month, Firstline, a Canadian health technology company that delivers expert guidance at point-of-care via a webbased application, announced a global partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO will distribute Firstline’s technology focused on combatting antimicrobial resistance — one of the WHO’s “global health threats”. Access to WHO guidance via Firstline’s technology will result in better outcomes for millions of citizens and health care systems around the world. Digital supported Firstline through development investment and enabling its collaboration with inter-governmental agencies to ultimately result in the ground-breaking partnership with the WHO.

“It s marvellous to see these Canadian companies — DNAstack and Firstline, on the world stage in a way that we haven’t seen before. This shows the power and potential of Canada’s small companies and the impact of what we re doing in the Digital Cluster,” says Paish.

Working together to achieve greater Great relationships are a catalyst for small organizations to learn and develop. This was the case for Vancouver-based Terramera, who s changing the economics of agriculture to grow food in a better way for people and the environment. Terramera uses complex science and green chemistry to create safer and healthier bio-pesticides, while also building healthier soil systems.

“We’re a founding member of the Digital Supercluster,” says Kim Haakstad, VP of Stakeholder Relations at Terramera. “There were skills and business needs that we didn’t have in-house, but we were able to leverage the skills of our partners in that project team to add to what we already had.”

Having the support of Digital gave Terramera credibility and attention from investors. It showed the organization had gone through a level of technical due diligence — giving Terramera strong roots to grow, now employing 135 people. Haakstad adds that its new piece of soil health technology was built in partnership with the University of British Columbia and recognizes this academic partnership as a vital piece in Terramera’s success.

Building a digital skilled workforce

Canadian industry needs talent that s prepared for the digital world. The Digital Cluster is getting Canadians job-ready for the digital economy by taking a new approach to skilling. “We often hear that talent is the biggest challenge facing a lot of companies, and that’s why we’re pursuing a demand-driven model to talent and workforce development,” says Sydney Goodfellow, Director of the Digital Cluster’s Digital Learning Lab. “We’re focused on rapid cycle, stackable, and a more person-

alized approach to digital education that ll train Canadians quicker and more affordably, regardless of where they live in Canada, their work, or their education background.”

The Canadian Tech Talent Accelerator project is delivering job-ready talent in 15 weeks for in-demand roles in cloud computing and data science. The training is based on what employers need, and the recipients are from communities underrepresented in the digital economy, including Indigenous, Black and other racialized citizens, people with disabilities, LGBTQ2S+, youth, women, and newcomers to Canada. This pan-Canadian approach to workforce development ensures Canada’s workers are at the forefront of change and meeting the needs of Canada’s fast-growing companies.

“This is an exceptionally exciting time for Canada. We re seeing small Canadian companies grow and be on the world stage, large enterprises benefitting from new ideas and our academic sectors supporting industrial R&D in new and creative ways. The world is taking note. This is good for Canada and good for the world,” concluded Paish.

Ken Donohue

Sue Paish CEO,

Marc Fiume CEO,

Kim

Sydney Goodfellow Director

AI Technology Is Improving Supply Chains and Fostering Economic Growth

Canada has invested in advanced AI research for decades and is excelling at producing talents in AI. Now’s the time to commercialize the breakthroughs, pushing boundaries and redefining what is possible with AI in the supply chain.

As the central pillar of Canada’s AI ecosystem, Scale AI facilitates the adoption of AI technologies to tackle some of our industries’ biggest challenges while creating meaningful advancements and reinforcing the backbone of Canada’s economic growth.

At Scale AI, key focuses include:

• Creating productivity gains across industries with AI-powered optimizations.

• Generating intellectual property (IP) and new business opportunities for Canada.

Strengthening Canadian supply chains through innovation and AI integration in products and services.

Driving concrete industry investments to accelerate economic growth “The goal of Scale AI is twofold,” says Julien Billot, CEO of Scale AI. “First, we facilitate the adoption and integration of AI in companies’ operations, and second, we support the development of new AI-powered products and services.”

As a business-led consortium, Scale AI was created to drive economic growth, but also to bolster Canada’s AI leadership in the global innovation race, support the building of world-class AI businesses and create highly skilled jobs.

Thanks to the government’s contribution, this cluster supports concrete projects and generates industry investments of almost two dollars for every dollar invested by the cluster.

Fostering unique partnerships to maximize economic opportunities

Scale AI connects and strengthens collaboration among businesses, research centres, universities, and other supporting organizations, as well as experts from all regions of the country. “We are creating unique opportunities for collaboration; it is a fundamental part of every project we fund. Without collab -

oration, there’s no value creation, knowledge sharing, or IP creation for Canada.” says Billot.

By enabling partnerships and leveraging the power of collaboration, Scale AI encourages companies to build capabilities faster and more effectively than they would be able to achieve on their own.

Canada’s AI global innovation cluster is breaking down silos across industries and driving meaningful change. It’s proud to work with mostly SMEs — Billot notes that “over 69 per cent of project participants are SMEs, which is very important because we don’t want AI to be exclusive to big businesses”.

Scale AI’s inclusive approach benefits all parties including Canadian startups that act to accelerate AI innovation. To date, the organization has funded over 100 industry projects and more than 200 startups in 30 accelerators and incubators across the country.

Working together to make our industries smarter

“We’ve been able to empower organizations across multiple industries and verticals: manufacturing and transportation but also retail, mining, agriculture, energy and health care,” says Billot.

As an example, the second-largest port in Canada, Port of Montreal has led multiple AI projects over the years to establish itself as a leader in the field of smart ports. This intermodal hub handles all types of goods: containerized and non-containerized cargo, liquid bulk, and dry bulk. The Port of Montreal worked with Scale AI to build a smart port that would navigate the movement of containers through a network driven by a complex web of information exchanges between numerous stakeholders. This was important for prioritizing critical shipments during the pandemic, for example. The Maritime Employers Association also worked jointly with Montreal-based startup Airudi to develop an AI solution to predict how many people would be needed to staff the port on any given day based on ships coming in, timing, availability of equipment and expertise required.

Scale AI has also financed an AI project with Toronto-based retail leader

Canadian Tire to optimize product placement based on specific constraints and elements, such as responding to local market needs, seasonality, store space, inventory supply, and desired assortment, all in an effort to improve the customer shopping experience.

In the manufacturing sector, Scale AI has supported Kruger Products to further propel its market position on premium tissue & towel products in North America. Using real-time data, the AI Digital Twin project recreates the new Sherbrooke plant’s entire supply chain virtually, adding an integrated set of predictive and prescriptive AI capabilities.

Accelerating commercial AI solutions

Alongside industry and commercialization projects, Scale AI is also supporting software companies in creating new layers of AI for future applications.

“For example, we’re helping software developers like Montreal-based AlayaCare to improve its suite of products to change the healthcare services sector and give them the ability to sell their solutions globally,” says Billot. “We also support the quality control solution developed by Toronto-based CrossWing to facilitate predictive maintenance through computer vision.”

Best of all, Scale AI is building a strong AI ecosystem that will continue to develop and leverage this critical technology for the future. Creating optimized supply chains involves reshaping business models, enhancing decision-making and elevating workforce performance. Unleashing improved processes and better efficiencies can all be achieved by harnessing and amplifying the power of AI.

Scale AI, Canada’s AI Global Innovation Cluster, empowers industries to optimize their performance, strengthen their competitive advantage and create business opportunities by leveraging AI technologies.

Tania Amardeil

PHOTO COURTESY OF SCALE AI

Accelerating Made in Canada Innovation in the Global Blue Economy

Largely unexplored and not well understood, whether you live by an ocean or not, it impacts us all.

Important to our very survival, every second breath we take is from the ocean, it’s home to marine species, and it connects us through transport and international commerce. Yet, today, we know more about space than we do ocean.

The Earth is comprised of more water than land, with ocean making up two-thirds of the planet’s surface. With only 20 per cent of the ocean surveyed, there is much work to do to better understand the Earth’s final frontier.

One of five clusters under the Federal Government’s Global Innovation Cluster initiative — Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is helping to transform the way we look at the ocean, reimagining an ocean economy that’s based on collaboration across different sectors and regions, and, advancing Canada’s leadership in a global blue economy that is set to outpace the broader economy by 20 per cent by 2030.

Canada’s Ocean Supercluster: An origin story

To appreciate this momentum that is building and the journey of the cluster to date, we need to better understand the Global Innovation Cluster initiative. Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the government supported initiative was designed to build Canada’s reputation as an innovative nation, increasing Canada’s leadership and competitiveness internationally. Based on cluster theory — the idea that geographic density can accelerate economic growth — the Global Innovation Cluster initiative identified five areas across Canada’s economy that showed incredible potential in helping to achieve just that.

“The program was built to focus on areas of greatest opportunity,” says Kendra MacDonald, CEO of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster. “A lot of these areas of opportunity are driven by addressing shared global challenges: health, food security, supply chain, and also climate change,” she says.

Investing in ccean

As we consider how to answer some of the world’s biggest economic opportunities and climate challenges, ocean may not be top of mind for the average Canadian. But, MacDonald notes that by better understanding the ocean, we can’t only accelerate the development and commercialization of more Canadian ocean solutions that tackle these problems, but also create increased contribution to the country’s GDP from the ocean and generate thousands of new jobs while contributing to a healthier planet.

The ocean economy is set to double by 2030 and during this UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, it’s increasing a focus on the global agenda. “The ocean is critical to addressing the world’s growing demand for sustainable protein, it

helps regulate temperature, absorbs more carbon than the rain forest, not to mention 90 per cent of our goods travel across the ocean,” says MacDonald. For Canada, the fourth largest ocean territory and home to the longest coastline in the world, “it’s a huge economic opportunity, and much of this has yet to be realized.” The cluster recently released a forward-looking document focused on the collective ocean growth opportunity. Ambition 2035, highlights the potential for our ocean economy to grow fives times from $39 billion to $220 billion by 2035.

It’s not just about the economic benefits; however, the Ocean Cluster also represents a critical investment in the future of the planet, the importance of increasing Indigenous participation in understanding both the challenges and the solutions in our ocean and supporting net-zero commitments. For Canada, our ocean-front borders and proximity to the Arctic make it an especially important investment in partnerships with communities, inclusive workforce and skills development, and sustainable economic growth. “We’re all impacted by the ocean — it’s relevant to climate, weather, and the rate of sea level rise.”

Collaboration key to sustainability Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is changing the way ocean business is done. A member-based non-profit organization, the national cluster is a catalyst for company growth, with a network of more than 520 like-minded organizations and fostering a collaborative environment between these members from coast-to-coast-to-coast. Members of the cluster cite its collaborative framework as a major benefit, with ideation and pitching sessions, funding opportunities, increased brand awareness and visibility, and the ability to participate in specialized project groups — including those focused on going further and deeper in the ocean for better data collection; advanced technologies to support remote work and operations; decarbonization of shipping; transitionary and renewable energy solutions; and innovative solutions including Artificial Intelligence in sustainable seafood.

“We’re tackling complex problems, that have applications across different sectors and different jurisdictions, so we need multiple points of view,” says MacDonald. “If we can accelerate growth by connecting companies and projects together, then the whole cluster network gets stronger.”

Project teams bring together young and mature companies, research partners, not-for-profits, and government to focus on

putting Canada at the forefront of cutting-edge ocean technology, in a way that has never been done before. The result? New partnerships, new growth, and new market opportunities, with more Canadian research getting commercialized, more Canadian companies growing, where through their Ocean Startup Project, the cluster has supported more than 100 new ocean companies in Canada in the last 2.5 years alone.

The world is increasingly watching what’s happening in ocean industries in Canada with great interest, some working toward adopting similar models. Speakers at a recent international ocean investment conference in Halifax, calling Canada’s ocean cluster model the gold standard.

Driving ocean innovation forward Member company Sensor Tech has seen this result first-hand. A Canadian leader in ocean technology, Sensor Tech has been developing specialized underwater sensors for more than 20 years. “We’re at the heart of any listening, talking or imaging underwater,” says Niru Somayajula, President, and CEO of Sensor Tech. Involvement with Canada’s Ocean Supercluster has helped the company achieve advancements years earlier than it might have. “The Ocean Cluster helps move projects forward, fostering advocacy for the ocean but also for us as businesses,” she says. “Having one body represent us all without bias helps facilitate leverage and opportunity.”

Sensor Tech will soon have two products in the market that were both fostered through the cluster.

For Somayajula, it’s not just about innovation but sustainability. “The future must be that we know a lot more about the ocean than we know today. There are a lot of technologies we need to explore that will help us understand the ocean and preserve it somehow. We rely on it for a lot of different things.”

Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is a pan-Canadian network delivering globally-relevant solutions and creating a more digital, sustainable, and inclusive ocean economy.

Sonya Friesen

Kendra MacDonald CEO, Canada’s Ocean Supercluster

Niru Somayajula President & CEO, Sensor Tech

The ocean is critical to addressing the world’s growing demand for sustainable protein, it helps regulates temperature, absorbs more carbon than the rain forest, not to mention 90 per cent of our goods travel across the ocean.

Canada’s Cluster Experiment Bears Fruit. And Flour.

It’s been an exciting few years for plantbased food, with many Canadians being inspired to expand their dietary horizons for the first time. Amid global food supply disruptions, climate crisis, population growth, and economic uncertainty, the need for innovation and sustainability in our nutritional milieu has never been clearer.

When Canada’s five Global Innovation Clusters — originally dubbed Innovation Superclusters Initiative — were created in 2018, the plant-based Protein Industries Cluster was an arguably idiosyncratic area of focus among broader clusters such as the Advanced Manufacturing Cluster and the Ocean Cluster. Four years on, however, the identification of plant-based protein as a critical target for Canadian innovation and economic growth seems downright prescient.

“The fundamentals that underpin the growth of the global plant-based food sector were certainly alive and well back in 2018, even if it wasn’t obvious to everyone,” says Bill Greuel, CEO of Protein Industries Canada, the not-for-profit administering the plant-based Protein Industries Cluster. “Since then, the impacts of climate change have become more evident, and our understanding of the fragility of our food system has become more prominent. Combine that with the major disruptions in global food supply chains from COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, and the importance of this sector is more heightened than ever.”

Moving forward as one Protein Industries Canada’s mission is centred on driving collaboration and innovation within the agriculture and food production sector to secure Canada’s place as a global leader in plant-based foods and co-products. Canada begins from a naturally advantageous position with a strong agricultural tech sector, a wealth of arable land, and crop diversity that’s the envy of the world.

Much of the hard work that the cluster has taken on involves bringing together the sector’s existing innovators to realize a completely vertical innovation ecosystem, creating jobs and stimulating both local and nationwide economic growth. “When we think about innovation in the food sector,

we really have to think about it in terms of a value chain,” says Greuel. “Innovation starts with advanced crop breeding technologies and genomic research, and it continues all the way to the product that ends up on a consumer’s plate.”

Re-imagining Canadian food crops While some of the new research and development in Protein Industries Canada’s portfolio involves exciting new foodstuffs for the Canadian diet, Greuel emphasizes that there’s also plenty left to learn about the potential and opportunity inherent in food crops Canadian farmers have been growing for centuries.

Avena Foods is a Regina-based specialty milling company that creates a variety of traditional and innovative food ingredients from oats and pulses. Avena has partnered with Protein Industries Canada and a variety of other companies, from farmers to bakeries, to develop new tempered oat and pulse flours through a proprietary process that applies heat and humidity in a precisely controlled manner. The result is new flours from familiar ingredients with new properties and new food product possibilities.

“We wanted to learn more about what’s actually happening to the flours as we process them and what sort of improvements could we make to the processing of these products, as well as what sorts of food applications these flours might be suitable for,” explains Gord Flaten, CEO of Avena. “We recognized that there was a lot we didn’t know, and there was a huge opportunity to understand and then control the process. We’re a relatively small company, and this kind of R&D work is complex and expensive. We didn’t even have an R&D department before partnering with Protein Industries Canada. Their support allows companies like Avena to grow bigger and faster. That’s critical.”

As the initial five-year lifecycle of the supercluster initiative draws to a close, Protein Industries Canada points to success stories like Avena’s as proof that the cluster model has been a wager worth doubling down on. And, if it was the dark horse of the five Global Innovation Clusters conceived in 2018, the plant-based food sector has since shown itself to be the very soul of Canadian potential.

Canada’s cluster initiative has been fostering innovation across five broad sectors, from the deep sea to the digital cloud, but some of the most profound developments are destined for the dinner table. Protein Industries Canada is the plant-based food global innovation cluster.

starts with advanced

breeding technologies and

research, and it continues all the way to the product that ends up on a consumer's plate.

Bill Greuel CEO, Protein Industries Canada

Gord Flaten CEO, Avena

New Canola Seed Technology Is Good for Canada's Economy

Anne Papmehl

Often referred to as the “Cinderella crop” of Canadian agriculture, canola is a success story for both Canadian agriculture and global consumers. Since it was introduced about 50 years ago, canola has transformed from an obscure and undervalued plant to one of Canada’s leading crops and one of the world’s most important oilseeds.

Grown primarily across Western Canada, the canola plant produces distinct yellow flowers, which produce tiny pods that hold canola seeds. Each seed is made up of about 45 percent oil which is used to make hearthealthy cooking oil, while the remaining 55 per cent solid parts of the seed are protein and fibre co-products that can be processed into canola meal and used as a protein source for dairy, swine, poultry, and fish.

About 20 million tonnes of canola are produced annually in Canada, generating about one-quarter of all farm crop receipts. While canola acreage has remained at roughly 23 million acres over the past decade, total production has increased thanks to modern agricultural farming practices, which have led to increases in average yield.

But consumer demand continues to grow, and for Canada to provide the ingredients for 10 per cent of the world’s plant-based food products, it will need to grow its food, feed, and ingredient sector by $25 billion by the year 2035. Achieving that goal requires investments in innovative ways to derive even more value from major food crops like canola.

adian plant protein sector, Protein Industries Canada recently funded a consortium of three industry partners — Corteva Agriscience, a seed developer; Bunge, a canola processor; and Botaneco, a protein processing innovator — on a project to create high protein and reduced fibre canola seed varieties.

The project — the first to focus specifically on protein quality improvement — has been underway for nearly three years. “We started off by looking at how to elevate the protein in the canola seed that would allow us to serve a much broader food and feed market,” says Tyler Groeneveld, North American Director for Grains and Oils at Corteva Agriscience, the partner company which led the project.

Higher value protein concentrate can elevate value of canola crop

Since then, the three collaborators have discovered that using advanced plant breeding technologies can increase the protein and decrease the fibre in the canola seed without compromising the quality, quantity, or composition of the oil — which is the key value driver of the canola crop. “The value creation opportunity comes from increasing the protein content in the by-product while maintaining the high-value oil component,” says Groeneveld. The protein is increased in part by reducing the fibre in the seed. “What’s best about this innovation is that the seed oil can be increased at the same time as the protein content is being increased,” he says.

enabling advanced processing to turn the protein into an isolate, which can be another upside to this project,” he says.

Recent announcements of increased processing capacity in the next four years will result in a surplus of canola protein to an already saturated North American animal feed market.

Groeneveld believes that the potential to offer elevated protein that’s more nutritious for swine, poultry, or aquaculture diets will result in more opportunities to participate in higher-value markets.

The increased processing capacity could also lead to an increase in demand for the oil in renewable diesel markets. “This renewable fuel market development is exciting for the growth of the industry, and our ability to increase value by altering the composition of what we’re already growing is an example of how the Canadian grower can solve for a lot of new needs in food, feed, and energy without having to use more acres,” says Groeneveld.

First project of its kind leads to interesting discovery

Protein Industries Canada, one of Canada’s five Global Innovation Clusters, is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization whose mission is to position Canada as a global source of high-quality plant protein and plant-based co-products. In keeping with its mission to invest collaboratively to accelerate innovation and competitiveness in the Can-

The result is a much higher-value protein content that can elevate the crop value per acre for everyone involved — from grower to processor to end user — and create new markets in human food, high-value animal feed markets, and renewable energy. “If you can get the entire canola crop to have a much higher level of protein in the seed, we can generate over half a billion dollars in incremental value for all participants and completely transform this crop to a much higher value feedstock that can support not only the traditional livestock and dairy markets, but meet the increase in North American demand for plant-based human foods and renewable fuel,” says Groeneveld.

Innovation opens door to new markets The technology is still a work in progress, but Groeneveld believes it’s just a matter of time before the canola meal can be turned into a nutritious edible protein for human consumption. “The amino acid complex of canola meal and protein is exceptional and

“It’s truly an exciting opportunity to innovate in a crop that we already have a global leadership position in,” he says.

Leadership from Protein Industries Canada exceptional

The Global Innovation Clusters program — including Protein Industries Canada — receive federal funding and are matched dollar-for-dollar by industry. “The co-investment funds from the Global Innovation Supercluster Program, administered by Protein Industries Canada, were critical to us in being able to increase the scale of the plant breeding program and reduce the timeline for this project,” says Groeneveld. “Their leadership in this area is exciting from a Canadian perspective because this project offers potential for incremental value in terms of jobs, GDP, new markets, and increased profit,” says Groeneveld. “Anyone eating new plant-based foods or using feed directly benefits from this type of innovation for protein technology from canola,” he says.

This is just the beginning of the journey, which will continue for several years, and the consortium of partners plans to make the technology and outputs available to all developers of canola seed. “Gaining that critical mass and collaboration with traditional competitors is what’s really going to make the Canadian canola industry expand

value,” he says.

To learn more about Corteva’s leadership in agricultural innovation, visit: corteva.com This article was

in

Corteva Agriscience and collaborators’ focus on optimizing canola seed composition could be a major driver of the canola industry’s future economic growth.

sponsored by Corteva Agriscience

Tyler Groeneveld North American Director, Grains & Oils, Corteva Agriscience

If you can get the entire canola crop to have a much higher level of protein in the seed, we can generate over half a billion dollars in incremental value for all participants.

Connections and Collaboration in Advanced Manufacturing Is a Win for All

The advancements in our daily lives are nothing less than spectacular. Yet, while we often attribute these successes to the underlying technologies, many of these advancements wouldn’t be a reality without the manufacturers who bring them to life — perhaps the unsung heroes in societal progress.

The manufacturing industry could very well be considered the lifeblood of innovation. Most Canadians don’t question where their goods come from or how they’re developed — we simply reap the benefits of advancements we didn’t even know we needed. Electric cars, 3D printing, and even vaccines — are all important components of 20th-century living; all made possible through manufacturing.

Manufacturing in a fast-moving world

The manufacturing industry has been forced to adapt to fit our lifestyle — integrating new and evolved processes to meet rapidly changing consumer demands. Advanced manufacturing is an iteration of this evolution, representing the integration and use of leading-edge technologies to improve manufacturing performance. This includes technological advancements, but this also represents how companies manage that technology and integrate it into their processes and develop the skill sets to use it commercially.

From nanotechnologies to biomanufacturing, as the world continues to progress at an unimaginable speed, the global economy has been forced to accept just how instrumental advanced manufacturing is in solving some of humanity’s most complex problems.

As a country, Canada is uniquely positioned to become a leader in advanced manufacturing — something the NGen Supercluster has built into its mission.

Advancing technology through collaboration

Over the last five years, NGen has worked to create a network of companies across the manufacturing ecosystem, opening doors to collaborations between organizations and industries, facilitating these connections and helping lead the future of advanced manufacturing in Canada. Put simply, NGen helps companies within the manufacturing sector better communicate with one another. As

well, membership in NGen allows companies to better understand other member organizations, often finding synergies and areas of opportunity. Its members include manufacturers from every sector of the industry: IT and software companies, AI companies, nanotechnologies, and biotechnology, and it has resulted in advancements like negative carbon building materials and robotic operations to mine oxygen on the moon.

“It’s about building unique manufacturing capabilities here in Canada that we can not only commercialize and benefit from economically, but that improve quality of life for Canadians" says Jayson Myers, CEO of Next Generation Manufacturing Canada.

Solutions to environmental challenges

As environmental impact becomes an area that requires more focus, the advanced manufacturing industry is sure to play a leading role in developing technologies and practices that help companies work in a way that reduces impact and creates more sustainable practices overall.

To accomplish this, companies and industries will have to work together, something that NGen is well-positioned to facilitate.

“Manufacturing is the practice of making things, but we must make things that will help solve some of the world’s problems. Improving health care, reducing emissions, and improving environmental performances are challenges that are becoming more daunting, so the role and opportunities for manufacturing are more important than ever,” says Myers.

Companies will have to work together to find realistic solutions to some of these problems. “We’re not going to be able to commercialize these opportunities unless we develop workable solutions for the industry that takes a collaborative approach,” Myers says. “Sustainability won’t be driven by technology alone; it’s how that technology is adopted by industrial customers.” It’s working. Sixty per cent of NGen projects aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a result of their project outcomes.

Breaking down industry barriers Collaboration has been one of the key successes of NGen so far. As Myers notes, many Canadian businesses don’t realize the capabilities available to them in Canada. NGen focuses on breaking down barriers to

partnership, introducing companies together and helping them find economic parallels.

Instead of leaning on a technology push approach, whereby manufacturing organizations adopt predeveloped technology, the idea is technology companies can work directly with industry customers, creating customized solutions that work better for the manufacturers directly. Myers refers to this as an industry-led approach.

“Industry or manufacturing companies want engineered solutions to their problems,” he says. “Tech companies may not always see the bigger picture until they work directly with the manufacturers themselves. NGen helps facilitate these collaborations.” Watching these collaborations come to life is the “fun part,” according to Myers.

NGen is far more than a funding mechanism. It works to help spark the development of world-leading projects and commercialize these for use in Canada and globally. While Canadians may not be a part of the process, we certainly experience the rewards. NGen has spearheaded some of the most innovative advancements propelling Canada forward from fully automated AI food processing facilities to a world-class biomanufacturing plant.

It’s not just about finding easier ways to work; it’s about finding ways that will lead to lasting change for the environment and for us as humans. “Manufacturing processes that print brain tissue for laboratory use or new stem cell therapies,” Myers says. “These innovations are helping to save lives.”

NGen facilitates ground-breaking discoveries across the Canadian manufacturing industry, merging technology with useability.

Sonya Friesen

Jayson Myers CEO, Next Generation Manufacturing Canada

PHOTO COURTESY OF NGEN

- Luna Yu, CEO of Genecis Bioindustries