I will answer in French, because I'm more fluent in French.
We work with small and medium-sized business. We take what universities design, we reduce any risks, we scale the designs, we assist with commercialization, and we cut down the time it takes to put them on the market.
I will give a concrete example. We are working with a company called Bio-K+ International. The company wants to get into the American market, where there was interest in products for children. So we worked with them on a probiotic for children. As a result, 70% of the company's sales are now in the United States. The probiotic is produced in Quebec. We have been working with the company to perfect the product for three years.
Another example of a business we worked with is Nemaska Lithium, that wants to produce lithium of the highest purity. The company has a mine in Whabouchi and wanted to design a membrane electrolysis process. We developed that process. We suggested that the company set itself up in our city of Shawinigan, which has been hit hard by recent plant closures. They agreed to open their plant in Shawinigan and they will be creating 150 jobs in the next three years. That all started from college-based research.
We take what already exists in universities, we adapt it and we partner with companies in scaling-up and commercialization. That is why we want budgets for applied research in the colleges to be increased. We have concrete examples. We should point out that 85% of the projects we have developed in the last 10 years, almost 1,000 projects, have ended up on the market. Products were designed, processes were improved and new technologies were inserted. The money that the government invested in us has allowed us to provide a lot of tangible help. Even without the economic benefits, you should know that, for every dollar invested in us, we manage to find another five in order to complete the project.