Programs

Intake Opens: July 7, 2025
Application Deadline: August 12, 2025

Innovation Booster

The Innovation Booster is designed to provide flexible and rapid support to Small or Medium Enterprises (SMEs - a business with 499 or fewer employees and less than $50 million in gross revenues) as they address food innovation challenges or technical hurdles that have created a barrier for achieving their commercialization goals.

Who Can Participate

To qualify for funding, all project proposals for any call must be:

Submitted by Canadian incorporated businesses with less than $50M in annual sales in their most recently completed fiscal year.
Seeking to demonstrate innovations between a Technology Readiness Level of 1 to 7. Projects including TRL 8 and 9 components will only be considered if they are part of a project that also includes TRL 1 to 7.
Projects should be no more than one year (12 months) in length.
CFIN supports industrial research and demonstration activities, focused on the food sector from farm-gate to consumer’s plate. Agriculture or primary production focused projects are not eligible for our funding.

All applicants must register for a free CFIN membership through www.cfin-rcia.ca.

Project Size

The total eligible project costs must be between $20,000 and $200,000, and the maximum level of matching funding from CFIN will be 50% of total eligible project costs, or $100,000.

Funding will be provided on a reimbursement basis and CFIN will require a non-refundable project management fee of 5% of total project costs eligible for CFIN funding.