CALGARY, AB / GUELPH, ON — The Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN) and Creative Destruction Lab - Rockies (CDL-Rockies) are pleased to announce a new community partnership designed to strengthen the commercial success of deep-tech innovation in the Canadian food sector.
This collaboration creates a powerful "producer-to-plate" pipeline, leveraging CFIN’s national network and industry expertise with CDL’s world-class, objectives-based mentorship program. The two organizations aim to create more opportunities for early-stage science and technology agrifood ventures to access the relationships, insights and support needed to grow and scale ventures in Canada.
"Canada is home to incredible foodtech brilliance, but the path from lab to market is often fragmented," says Dana McCauley, CEO of CFIN. "By working alongside CDL-Rockies, we hope to expand opportunities for the companies we support to connect with potential mentors, investors and industry leaders who can help them build successful businesses."
Key areas of collaboration include:
"This partnership strengthens our ability to support founders building solutions across the entire value chain," says Heather Marshall, Site Lead at CDL-Rockies. "This partnership reflects a shared priority to support the commercialization of technologies solving the most complex challenges in the food sector both at home and around the world. We’re excited to work alongside CFIN to help strengthen connections within Canada’s innovation ecosystem."
The partnership is effective immediately, with joint activities scheduled throughout the 2026 program year.
The Canadian Food Innovation Network (CFIN) is a national organization that’s stimulating transformative and transferrable innovation within the Canadian food sector. Since 2021, CFIN has awarded more than $22,301,276 (matched by $25,138,939 in industry investment) to 122 Canadian foodtech projects that derisk new technologies that will make the food sector more competitive. CFIN-funded companies have generated $90 million in economic impact and created over 355 jobs and co-op placements. Our funding recipients have attracted more than $82 million in follow-on investment.
With over 8,500 members and counting, CFIN has built the fastest growing and most engaged food business community in the country and our members come from across the globe, representing all parts of the food value chain. CFIN’s free membership includes access to exclusive funding programs, five Regional Innovation Directors, and YODL.
About Creative Destruction Lab - Rockies
CDL-Rockies helps visionary innovators reduce the barriers that prevent their innovations from having a massive impact. Extraordinary, accomplished mentors and visionary innovators are selected and intentionally curated into teams, then situated into the program (Nurture, CDL, ScaleUp) that best suits their needs. Their innovations are stress-tested within each program’s framework, preparing founders to successfully commercialize.