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.
Many of these barriers result from capacity limitations, as SMEs do not have the expertise, specialized resources, or capabilities on-hand to undertake the required food innovation and research activities, with sufficient scale to achieve impactful results. Equipment purchases are allowed, but their requirement to achieve specific research goals must be articulated.
Applicants will outline their specific innovation challenge or technical hurdle and the expertise and resources that are required to complete the project, within a 12-month period, and move their food innovation closer to commercialization.
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.
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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.
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Projects should be no more than one year (12 months) in length.
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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.
See the Program Guide for a full overview of the program.