A new project—based at the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre—will work on turning oats, chickpeas, fababeans, lentils and hemp into liquid-based plant protein products and ingredients.

The $7.2 million venture is the latest project from Protein Industries Canada (PIC)—one of five economic superclusters created by the federal government to spur economic activity.

PIC will provide half of the funding with the rest coming from two players in the private sector—Mera Developments in Regina and Benson Farms based at Raymore.

“Mera Developments is an engineering firm that started up a food division about eight years ago,” said Bill Greuel, PIC chief executive officer. “They have been working on new technology for Canada’s value-added food processing sector.”

Benson Farms will run trial plots to determine which are the best crop varieties for Mera’s processing technology.

The testing will be done at the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre in Saskatoon. Mera Food Group has already signed a deal with Federated Co-operatives Limited to produce an oat milk which should be on the grocery store shelf sometime next year.

Greuel anticipates there will be bigger opportunities for liquid based proteins in the growing consumer markets in southeast Asia. These liquids could be added to other food products to increase their protein content.

“They can be used as protein extenders and protein additives in products that you might see today and products we can only dream about,” said Greuel. “They could also be used as a feedstock into other processing technologies. So other companies that might want to extract protein out of that liquid and utilize it for other things. There is an endless possibility of things that can come from this initial first step of processing.”

The project will also bring new co-packaging machinery into the Food Industry Development Centre. It will then be available for use by other companies that test new food products.