Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food
There is no other place like this in the world. To most people, POS Pilot Plant at Saskatoon’s Innovation Place is a bit of an enigma, so President and CEO Bob Morgan agreed to provide some enlightenment.
First of all, this is a private, not-for-profit, membership-based corporation. Users pay for the services POS Pilot Plant provides. That, together with government funding, is how the place gets the finances to carry out its activities. It has been in operation since 1977, and now encompasses a 54,000 square foot facility comprised of pilot plant processing areas, laboratories, warehousing and quarantine areas, library, client rooms and administrative areas.
Some key features that will help you fast track your product development plans include a 24 hour a day, five day a week operating schedule with innovative, scientific and technical staff providing pragmatic and creative solutions, as well as grams to tons processing capability.
As Morgan describes the role of the POS Pilot Plant, “let’s imagine that you are a potential client—an entrepreneur exploring an idea for commercialization purposes. Keep in mind that we can work with any biological material except meat. You may have a seed that contains an ingredient that you would like extracted and used in the manufacturing process of a product, whether edible or not. We could take that plant material through the laboratory and seek a way to extract that substance at a profitable level. “If you wished to carry on the project to the next level, we would look at scaling up production of this material at the production plant for you.”
If your source plant material had to be brought in from outside the province, POS Pilot Plant has a logistics department that can look after this need, or any kind of warehousing and shipping needs you may have.
“We would provide you a client room that you could use within our facilities. This is a very particular mode of operation,” explains Morgan. “With us, the client does not carry out his or her own work within our facilities. Our own staff do that, because this is what we do.
“We would develop a process to do the work. We would carry it out and, at the end, we would come up with an opinion as to whether this endeavour is too costly, or too difficult, or we might say yes, it can be done. We would provide you a report that you could take back with you to study in order to make a decision to go ahead with manufacturing on a larger scale, or not.”
POS Pilot Plant could produce a sample for you to test the market before you embark on full production. There is no doubt that having a facility like this reduces your risks, because you don’t have to assume the capital investment required for the initial development work.
“We assume the quality control of our work and you keep the intellectual property, but we don’t get involved in the packaging or those other peripheral components,” says Morgan.
“Other facilities do not provide the analytical contribution we provide. That is another reason why we can say there is no other place like this in the world. As a result, there is about a 50 per cent split between the number of our Canadian and U.S. clients, with roughly five per cent being from other international jurisdictions.”
By the way, the letters “POS” stand for protein, oil and starch. It was the original mission of this pilot plant to focus on these three aspects.
“Our role in the development of canola oil was our first major breakthrough,” notes Morgan.
POS Pilot Plant employs about 75 people, and is helping to grow and create new bio-based businesses in Canada. If you have an idea and/or want to grow your business, it’s worth further exploring with POS.
For more information, contact:
Bob Morgan, P.Ag.
President and CEO
POS Pilot Plant Corp.
(306) 978-2847
http://www.pos.ca/
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