MBiz

28 mbiz | may 2015 c e n t r a l / m i d W e s t "i nnovation everyday." That's the formula driving the creative mind of Kelly Beaulieu, COO of Canadian Prairie Garden Purees Inc., an upstart food processing company that is positioning itself to meet the future needs of a hungry world. "In 2050, we are predicted to have 9.1 billion people in the world, and that's going to increase our demand for food by 70%," she says. So it begs the crucial question: Where will that food come from? Beaulieu, a certified agrologist with a B.Sc. in Agriculture, believes she has the answer: An enormous reduction in wasted food right from farmers's fields, combined with a new technology that dramatically reduces the energy footprint to process, package, transport and store the product. It's taken Beaulieu and her partners 10 years to develop the technology and the business, and they are on the threshold of the marketplace. "We were looking for a way to handle the huge amount of waste stream that the vegetable producers around Portage la Prairie were dealing with," she says. Between 30 and 60% of produce is discarded in the field because it doesn't meet the strict visual quality standards that retailers demand. Canadian Prairie Garden Purees (CPGP) is buying that produce from farmers and creating a line of processed food made with clean, non-GMO ingredients for large-scale food industry customers. What makes it extraordinary is a direct steam injection technology combined with a continuous flow process that both cooks and sterilizes the puree, taking it from field to ready-to-transport at breakneck speed. "It cooks the vegetables in nine seconds, and from the time they are raw to the time they are in the package is less than two minutes," Beaulieu says. The puree remains fresh and stable at room temperature for two years in its fully recyclable aseptic packaging. That means there is no need to refrigerate it during transport or storage — two huge consumers of energy. Beaulieu says the high-tech process mimics what a chef would do: Uses the whole vegetable with peels, quick cooking time and a quick cooldown to preserve flavour, nutrients and colour. "We took samples to Nestle's, Gerber, Beechnut and Campbell's Soup and we asked them what they thought of the quality, and they told us it was the best product they had ever seen." In addition to fruit and vegetable crops like carrots, beets, corn, pumpkin, onions, saskatoons and more, legume and pulse crops like lentils and chickpeas lend themselves well to the process. To continue developing the product, CPGP has partnered with cream of the crop garden purees savours sWeet success By Wendy King

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