I'll do my best to slow that down.
Essentially, what we do as an organization is provide to industry the services of the colleges and institutions of Atlantic Canada in industrial and applied fisheries research and development. We are a university-owned, government-funded, and industry-driven research and development organization. We're known as an SIE, a separately incorporated entity, so we are driven, as an organization, by industry. What we do is provide solutions to industry problems and we meet new opportunities. It's about cutting costs and improving revenue to the industry, and looking at sustainability issues in the industry as well.
Over the last 20 years, as an organization we've funded 760 projects throughout Atlantic Canada at a total value of nearly $86 million. That doesn't include the commercialization of a lot of that research and development. If you look at a multiplier effect, obviously the results would be much larger.
There's been a tremendous uptake in our mandate in the Maritimes. We expanded into the Maritimes in 2002. We opened an office in Bedford, Nova Scotia, that's responsible for all our Maritime activities, and that's been quite successful. I'm going to talk a little bit about that.
Essentially, as an organization we're catalysts for research and development. We have two or three key functions. Obviously, as an organization we provide seed funding to projects. Our leverage rate is tremendous in all the initiatives we undertake, and that's obviously a big part of our organization and our mandate. We also provide project management support. We like to use the term “from concept to cash register” as an organization. We take on initiatives. We take ideas from the drawing board and get them into the ocean or into the plant or into wherever they need to be to take on key research and development initiatives. That's a big part of the centre's mandate.
In terms of governance, CCFI has a board of directors that consists of 18 members, 16 of whom are drawn from industry. Two are our shareholders, one from the Marine Institute and one from Memorial University. I always make the point that it's not Carey Bonnell guiding CCFI; it's the industry that's guiding CCFI.
Our board of directors guides the centre. They are drawn from industry throughout Atlantic Canada, from the harvesting, processing, and aquaculture sectors. We also have an executive committee, which consists of the chairs of our various advisory committees, including the harvesting committee, the processing committee, and the aquaculture committee. They're responsible for the day-to-day operations, or help with the day-to-day operations, of the centre. As I mentioned, we have offices in St. John's, Newfoundland, and Bedford, Nova Scotia.
To give you a snapshot of the last six to seven years, I'm going to use the benchmark of our expansion into the Maritimes. In 2002 we expanded into the Maritimes. We secured $6 million in funding under round one of the Atlantic Innovation Fund. This was our first foray into the Maritimes, and when we launched that program of R and D Atlantic-wide, we set a target of about $12 million worth of R and D in total, so basically it was a two-to-one leverage rate. What we actually achieved was about $24 million worth of research and development. We funded 195 projects throughout the Atlantic region.
Our R and D in the Maritimes was valued at about $9 million. We had a target of 25% as a starting point, not knowing what the expectations would be. Of the R and D done by the centre over the last six years, 38% has been carried out in the maritime region, which I think is a testament to the success of the centre. I recently did an interview with a consultant on the AIF program, who asked what the best success of the centre has been. I said that the Maritimes expansion, the uptake, has been by far the best success. The issues facing the industry in the Maritimes, as you very well know, are the same as the issues facing the Newfoundland and Labrador industry.
Our project leverage rate under that program was one to five, so for every dollar the centre spent, we leveraged five dollars from other sources. In terms of our leveraged funds, industry contributes almost 50% of the project costs, so for every project we undertake, upwards of 45% of the funding comes directly from industry, in both direct and in-kind contributions. We recognize in-kind contributions. If a harvester donates his vessel to a boat, to the centre, that's a lost commercial opportunity, and it's relevant to mention.
Our administrative costs are extremely low as an organization, making up about 10% of our overall program.
We partner with 13 universities throughout the Atlantic region. We've been involved in a wide range of commercialization projects, including aquaculture expansion through emerging species development, vessel efficiency modifications, value-added product development, and so on. Significant long-term job creation and revenue generation have occurred in both industry and the academic community.
You can think of our organization as an industrial network. We have, over the last 20 years, partnered with over 200 organizations throughout the Atlantic region, ranging from associations and unions to individuals and vertically integrated companies. They include Clearwater Fine Foods in Nova Scotia, Island Fisherman's Cooperative in New Brunswick, Connors Bros. in New Brunswick, Ocean Choice International, the FFAW union in Newfoundland and Labrador, Cooke Aquaculture, and a whole range of other groups throughout the region. We work with everyone from individual owner-operators all the way up to vertically integrated multinational companies. We don't separate in any manner. As long as it's relevant research and it's industry-driven and it has a purpose, we are at the table as an organization.
As I mentioned, our academic network consists of 13 institutions. You'll all be familiar with every one of them, I would assume: the University of New Brunswick; UPEI and the AVC; Nova Scotia Agricultural College; Dalhousie University; Nova Scotia Community College; Coastal Zones Research Institute in New Brunswick; obviously, Memorial University and the Marine Institute; Acadia; Holland College; Cape Breton University; Huntsman Marine Science Centre; and St. Francis Xavier University.
We've worked with them all at one point or another. They have tremendous talent that they can apply to this fishing industry, and they are applying it largely due to the support that's provided by our organization. Very much they're complementary resources. We've built a bit of an inter-institutional model as well. Where universities have had different skill sets, we've brought them together on strategic initiatives throughout the region, which I think is important.
One point that I always hype about the centre is our industry contribution. Nearly 50% of our funding on projects currently comes from industry. When we started in 1989, we had an industry leverage rate of about 14%. That has grown over our mandate, over the last 20 years, to almost 50%. That speaks, in my view at least, to the relevance of the centre and to the great work we're doing.
I'll talk very briefly about the areas of focus of the centre. We consider ourselves an “ocean to plate” organization. That term is popular these days, but we've been doing it for 20 years. Basically, we take on projects from resource and harvesting through processing and aquaculture.
The key areas that we focus on include improved selectivity and bycatch avoidance; sea-bottom-friendly technologies; stock assessment and surveys for emerging species; safety technology, which is so important; vessel design work; fuel efficiency; energy efficiency through improved gears and designs; and facilitating industry efforts to achieve and maintain sustainability certification, a new and emerging area where this industry requires support. On the processing sector, we do work in product quality enhancements, processing automation, value-added production, marine biotechnology, and waste management. On the aquaculture side, we do a lot of research on productivity enhancements for established species and various initiatives for developing emerging species.
In the last few minutes I have, I want to talk a little bit about the work we're doing on lobster, given the focus of these committee proceedings right now. We've done work on the R and D side and as a facilitative body as well, so I'll touch on both.
In terms of lobster research, we've done a whole range of things on sustainability over the years. This includes looking at the consequences of lobster larval settlement, and providing further insight on lobster population dynamics and developing new tools to improve future management. We've done work in terms of reviewing global lobster enhancement efforts throughout the Atlantic region.
We've also done successful lobster conservation enhancement projects with the Eastport Peninsula Fishermen's Association in Newfoundland and Labrador. That research itself actually led to an individual harvester receiving a Governor General's award for responsible fishing operations. We were looking at closed area trials, v-notching, and a whole range of other things. We were one of the catalysts involved in that research as well.
Some of our more recent work is focused more on the processing sector and efficiency. I'm sure during your trip to the Maritimes you've heard a lot about some of the challenges facing the industry, the need to look at product development and at redefining and reprofiling lobster in the marketplace. In the last year, we've focused quite a bit of our work on that area. I'll touch on a couple of projects.
We've done work on value-added products utilizing injection technology with Baie Sainte-Anne Co Op in New Brunswick. We've also done work on the development of protocols for food service use of hyperbaric processed lobster with Ocean Choice PEI. Both projects were carried out and facilitated by us, with the academic partner of the Culinary Institute of Canada, located in Prince Edward Island. They have tremendous expertise in this area and they do great work.
We've also been involved in the successful development of lobster splitter technology for Ocean Choice PEI. We've recently been involved in the exploration of live lobster holding to expand market opportunities. That's been a project with a truck owner in Newfoundland and Labrador. It was initially done with the Marine Institute in Newfoundland, and has since expanded to AVC's lobster science centre, where they're looking at opportunities to extend the shelf life of live lobster to expand market opportunities perhaps into the western seaboard of the United States. So that's an exciting piece of work as well. Significant technology has gone into that.
Moving to a new focus of the centre, more frequently in recent years we've been called upon to play a more strategic role in the industry. We're the independent broker, as we like to call it; the honest broker. People look at us as independent, given our mandate and given that we work with everyone.
We've done a range of projects in the last three years. We had a haddock conference in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, two years ago, looking at the strategic issues related to the recovery of that resource and how we're going to exploit that research. We brought market experts in from around the world to talk about that industry and how best to prosecute it from the ocean to the plate, resource harvesting, processing, and marketing.
We further built upon that, and in October of 2007 we hosted an Atlantic lobster summit. I'm going to talk about that in a moment. That's been a real success story for the centre, and I'm sure you heard quite a bit about it in your deliberations in the Maritimes. Just last January, following up on that, we hosted an international shrimp conference in St. John's, Newfoundland. Over 250 industry experts and leaders from throughout Atlantic Canada, Europe, the U.S., and Asia attended. They looked at addressing some of the key issues facing the international coldwater shrimp industry. We've had all kinds of positive praise for that work, and it's really been a huge success, and there have been research initiatives drawn from that research as well.
I'll just focus in a little bit more on the lobster summit activity as well. We hosted a lobster summit in the fall of 2007. The theme for that summit was market realities, market challenges, and market opportunities. The objective was to develop approaches to maximize value of the resource for all participants in the Atlantic lobster industry. We had over 250 people attend that conference. The feedback has been tremendous, and it's led to a whole range of new initiatives.
There were five key conclusions from that summit. I think it's important to briefly touch on them. The first was the need to collaborate to tackle key issues in the industry: sustainability, supply issues, cashflow, and market intelligence. They recommended the establishment of a stakeholder organization to move that forward. The second was to manage for sustainability. The third was to become proactive in addressing emerging market issues. The fourth was to explore new market opportunities particularly in expanding beyond the United States. The fifth was to look at improved product and product development initiatives, which is what we've been doing certainly quite a bit of.
In terms of the next steps following up on the lobster summit, there was a request to establish a stakeholder organization to move these key recommendations forward. CCFI was asked to play a lead role on that research. We formed a lobster round table in the fall of 2008. The purpose of the round table essentially was to provide a forum for stakeholders to build and implement joint action plans for industry success. There were four key objectives. The first was to create a shared understanding of key market challenges and opportunities facing the sector. The second was to set goals and targets to strengthen the sector's competitive position. The third was to build agreements on coordinated action plans. And the fourth was to improve returns to the industry through identification and implementation of changes that will improve the value chain. This round table consists of the entire Atlantic industry, with Quebec interest as well. It's all about consensus building. We've had three meetings over the last three months.
I just want to finish with one final point on the round table.
There was a recommendation made at the last meeting, which was about two and a half weeks ago, and that was that immediate action be taken to form a lobster development council to look at the generic marketing campaign for lobster and sustainability certification options in the industry. The second recommendation was to establish a steering committee from the round table to serve as the provisional board for that organization. The third was that the lobster round table continue to serve as an advisory body to that council. CCFI has been asked to lead the charge on moving that initiative forward, again as the honest broker in the industry. The challenge we face as an organization is that we are in a situation now where we're facing the prospect of closure in the coming weeks. We were supposed to have this steering committee up and running, but it's something we haven't been able to do because unfortunately we're too busy trying to breathe some life into the centre to continue its operation.
To finish off today, I would like to give you a short overview of the current status of the centre. Last year, as a condition of funding through ACOA's innovative communities fund, we were asked to complete---
