Supporting the Economic Recovery of SMEs in PEI's Biotechnology, Food Processing and Clean Tech Sectors

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Summary of ProposalSupporting the recovery of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) in Prince Edward Island's biotechnology, food processing and clean tech sectors through collaborative research and development (R&D) is of tremendous importance to the Island economy. These industries were not immune to the effects of Covid-19 and faced challenges with staffing, supply chains and shifted from pursuing innovation, to staying afloat. This initiative identifies key areas of strategic expertise at Holland College (HC) that will support short- and medium-term innovative R&D projects with industry partners resulting in immediate outcomes and benefits to those partnering companies and organizations, facilitating an emergence from this stagnant growth period. Specifically, 12 new industry driven projects have been identified and fully scoped, with a focus on creating short term paybacks for those industry partners such as generating new value from food waste products, advancing technologies to improve environmental outputs and decrease time to market, and improving processes to save costs and shift production capacity. New relationships will be developed, and existing relationships fortified over the next two years of this initiative. These bi-directional collaborations will result in new opportunities for company personnel reskilling and training, access to R&D expertise, developing new intellectual property and creating new value and revenues. This initiative also creates exciting opportunities for staff, faculty, technicians, and students at HC to participate in real-world projects, providing valuable professional development to faculty and staff and creating employment and specialized training opportunities for students. In addition, specific outcomes have been defined to increase the EDI capacity at Holland College, ensuring diversity and inclusion is top of mind when assembling research teams for the betterment of the projects.