December 20, 2018

Hello and Season’s Greetings from Protein Industries Canada. We would like to take this opportunity to provide an update on Protein Industries Canada activities as we head into the holiday season.

We have been hard at work staffing the organization and have started interviews for the two key roles of Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Operating Officer. We have had great interest in Protein Industries Canada as an employer and plan to make announcements on successful candidates in the new year.

You may have seen that Dr. Bob Tyler from the University of Saskatchewan has agreed to act as the Interim Protein Industries Canada Chief Technology Officer until the end of March 2019. Bob has a wealth of experience in the food processing sector, both in academia and industry. He will be developing Protein Industries Canada’s project selection criteria, as well as the Expression of Interest and Full Application templates. We will have more information to share in early 2019 about the timing and process for project funding.

Critical to project selection and funding is the creation of an Independent Review Committee. In early January, Protein Industries Canada will launch a call for subject matter experts in each of the four pillars, who will help guide Protein Industries Canada investments by:

• Evaluating Expressions of Interest and Full Applications for alignment to Protein Industries Canada goals, technical feasibility and return on investment
• Providing meaningful feedback on Expressions of Interest to strengthen the subsequent Full Applications
• Suggesting additional collaboration partners that could help strengthen proposals
• Recommending projects to receive funding

Also in the new year, we plan to host a series of priority-setting workshops to help identify the largest challenges and opportunities within Protein Industries Canada’s four pillars of Create, Grow, Make and Sell. Our objective is to bring together members to develop project ideas and proposals for Protein Industries Canada to consider. We welcome input from our membership as we develop the workshop agendas. If you have ideas for topics that you feel these workshops should address, please send a note to info@proteinsupercluster.ca

Finally, stakeholder engagement is a continued priority. Sessions are being planned for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where we will tell the Protein Industries Canada story and have discussions about project funding and research priorities as we build our project selection processes. We are preparing for the Protein Industries Canada membership drive in early in 2019 and will advise you soon on when and how to become a member.

Thanks so much to everyone who has reached out and offered to help Protein Industries Canada in our early days. This is much appreciated and speaks volumes to the collaborative nature of Western Canada.

The Protein Industries Canada office will be closed starting December 24 and back in full force on January 2, 2019.

Have a safe and happy holiday season.

Bill Greuel
Chief Executive Officer