Consumers desire ever-healthier foods while producers want to innovate and maximize profits. With the help of BioFoodTech, everyone prospers. The Charlottetown-based company offers food and bioscience technology and lab services. It helps develop foods that contain bioactives such as vitamins and minerals and helps with bioprocessing, which involves the design and development of equipment and processes for manufacturing. “Everybody has to make their products healthier these days” says BioFoodTech executive director Jim Smith. “It’s what people are looking for—they want things like antioxidants and omega fatty acids.” 

The success stories linked to BioFoodTech include Island Abbey Foods, which developed its award-winning Honibe honey drop at the centre. BioFoodTech staff helped with the dehydration and manufacturing processes. Until recently, BioFoodTech was called the Food Technology Centre, but not all products developed there are edible, leading to the name change. 

Smith says the food industry has evolved to make maximum use of byproducts, now called co-products; for example, different industrial ingredients can be extracted from straw to make lignan and cellulose. “As well as processing and converting bio-
resources to food, we’re looking at other ways products can be converted to something of greater value to consumers and producers,” he says. “The idea is to find everything that can be used, then use it for the most valuable purpose.”