Thank you very much for the question.
The centre was actually established about 23 years ago with some government funding. The intent at that time was to provide a service to support the wood product industry in Atlantic Canada. Over time the idea was that the centre would become self-sustaining. This is how we've been operating for the last 22 or 23 years, which is to provide services and bring in revenue to support the technical side of that and in turn serve the needs of the industry.
Over time, as I mentioned in my remarks, on average we supported about 30 to 40 companies per year with their innovation needs. This would include helping them develop new products, finding opportunities for products in domestic and overseas markets, testing a product that would eventually allow a company to get approval by the building code to be used in building construction, and so on. This is the role we have played over the last 22 or 23 years. At the same time, being part of the university we also have a function to produce what we call highly qualified personnel like graduate students who in turn go out and work for the wood industry, design companies, and so on. Essentially, we perform and function as a technical support agency as well as producing human resources that would support the wood industry as well.