Food Hub UBC
The funding presentation at UBC for a new food and beverage innovation center.
BC’s wine sector will soon have its first industry resource guide aimed at new vineyards and wineries to arm them with information to create great wine from the vineyard to the bottle.
On October 26, the Provincial government announced $30,000 in funding to create the guide, expected to be available in 2020 on the BC Wine Grape Council website.
Once produced, the guide will be updated as needed and will include information on grape and wine industry resources, business operations, considerations prior to entering the industry, and regulatory agency information.
This announcement came on the heels of the October 25, $2.58 million funding presentation at UBC for a new food and beverage innovation center at the university.
The money, to be provided over three years, will create an endowment fund for the center as well as Anubhav Singh’s brand new professorship as BC’s first professor of food and beverage innovation.
UBC was ranked number one for agriculture and forestry programs in Canada in 2019 by Top Universities, and according to Rickey Yada, Dean of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, the food science program is ranked in the top 100 world-wide.
Minister of Agriculture Lana Popham was on-hand to make the announcement about the center, which will fall within Yada’s department, and to congratulate Singh on his appointment.
“It’s a system where the center will be providing timely information to the sector,” Popham says.
The innovation center is an integral part of the province’s Food Hub Network program which began with the Vancouver-based Commissary Connect kitchen and is being added to with announcements about funding for similar hubs in Quesnel, Port Alberni and Surrey.
Funding for additional Food Hub locations are expected to be announced as studies on the best locations continue.
The food and beverage center will focus on improving processing technology, creating new products, developing talent for the industry and becoming a conduit to share information with processors involved in the Food Hub Network.
This will enable two-way communication about new discoveries, challenges to be explored and successes.
“We are very, very grateful for how this investment will pave the way for future innovations and beyond,” says UBC president and vice-chancellor Santa J. Ono. Of Singh, he says, “I’m confident that his research will strengthen existing ties with industry and establish new partnerships.”