CATA Technology Innovation Award – Canadian Prairie Garden Purees
Canadian Prairie Garden Purees (CPG), founded by Sandy Bay First Nation member Kelly Beaulieu is a Manitoba-based agri-business whose mission is to provide top quality vegetable, berry and legume puree products to the food industry in Canada and around the world. When you think of the word ‘innovative’, fruits and vegetables are probably not the first things that come to mind! But that’s going to change with the introduction of Innovative Steam Infusion Cooking Technology from Canadian Prairie Garden.
The technology has been redesigned for use as a puree processing system by CPG and this commercial process line is the only one of its kind in the world and the intellectual property to operate the equipment and to create premium purees is owned by CPG. This patented ultra-high temperature direct steam injection process “flash cooks” legumes, fruits and vegetables in 4-20 seconds and then it is moved through a rapid cool down chiller system that reduces the heat from 138 degrees celsius to a packaging temperature of 25 degrees.
Canadian Prairie Garden Purees offers a truly green process with 30% reduction in energy consumption, water usage and waste and up to 60% reduction in cleaning chemicals. As top quality cull produce will be utilized by CPG, local farmers will have the ability to sell approximately 30-60% more of their current production.
Canadian Prairie Garden Purees has generated great buzz and interest in the industry from Nestles, Sodexo Canada, Tim Hortons, Lassonde, Kitchen Partners and Campbell’s Soup.
Click here to watch the acceptance speech.
