Yes. Thanks, Marc.
In terms of the challenge, and meeting that challenge, the SMEs in the food and beverage sector that we see typically lack the resources and capabilities to scale up production, as Marc mentioned. The way that Niagara College, and the Canadian Food and Wine Institute at Niagara College, can really advance the food and beverage sector across Canada and locally is to expand on our ability to develop products with industry and move towards the more commercialization side of things. We already do commercialization; however, there is a gap in terms of production.
We are proposing a flexible food and beverage processing facility, and flexible is the key. It needs to be modular. It needs to be flexible and allow different companies to access the technology to produce at a mesoscale of production during the ramp-up and commercialization phase.
Typically, what we see with small and medium-sized food and beverage product producers is that we can develop a product with them here, we can make a small batch for them here, and then we have to jump right to a co-manufacturer, which has a minimum quantity order, which is oftentimes too risky and expensive for those SMEs. We are now looking at something that would fill the gap between that.
At Niagara College and at the Canadian Food and Wine Institute we feel that, paired with all of our learning enterprises and resources here, and the expertise, we could build and develop this type of facility that would enable the SMEs in food and beverage across Canada to be able to make that leap successfully, without taking on the additional risk and without taking on the massive cash investment that typically comes with this type of product development.
This will only lead to, as an outcome, food and beverage innovation and competitiveness. It will enable the product development to occur at a rapid pace. It will enable more SMEs to come out of the woodwork and to take risks, without having the great burden financially. Also, we're training students here, and the opportunity for us to be able to inject these students into a world-class facility that is dealing with real-world industry gives us the opportunity to train a workforce which is, quite frankly, from what I've been told from multiple discussions across industry, undereducated in many ways on the processing side. How does Niagara College play a role in ensuring competitiveness? It's through this type of training initiative that would come with the innovation side of it in product development.
At the end of the day, we require an investment to be made. We require the funding necessary to be able to develop this type of facility here at the college, to really raise all boats across Canada and regionally here in food and beverage processing.
Thank you.