Winnipeg’s Merit Functional Foods wanted to build a world-class, made-to-order facility with a specialized purpose: to extract food-grade canola and pea protein for the global food and beverage industry.
Recognizing the company’s potential, Farm Credit Canada (FCC) committed $25 million in financing to the project. But FCC knew that Merit would need a more substantial package of support to get the facility built. So FCC approached EDC.
Like FCC, EDC immediately recognized Merit’s unique potential. For starters, the company filled a gap: Canada is great at growing food, but we don’t process much of it here. Merit was going to do this with its new facility, and was going to do it with superior proprietary technology. In fact, Merit’s facility would be the first in the world to extract food-grade canola protein on a commercial scale. What made Merit even more attractive for EDC was the fact that it is a cleantech company. The company’s alternative protein products are derived from plants and are designed to replace animal meat, which is a major contributor to climate change. Read the full story in our annual report.