Ancaster’s Steeped Tea gets a boost

Ancaster’s Steeped Tea is flowing its coconut calypso and peaches-and-cream drinks into the U.S. market with the help of government funding.

The decade-old company received $61,313 from the federal and provincial governments to help train about 1,000 sales representatives below the 49th parallel to spread the word about Italian orange soda and vanilla cupcake teas.

“We are shifting our focus from a general catalogue for North America to one for the Canadian market and one for the U.S. market,” said chief executive officer Hatem Jahshan.

“We have to grow the infrastructure and equip (the salespeople) with the right tools. This (funding) will strengthen our businesses abroad.”

The funding was part of a recent announcement by Hamilton MPP Ted McMeekin and Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas MP Filomena Tassi at Steeped Tea’s headquarters in the Ancaster Business Park.

This included $518,720 going to seven Hamilton-area companies involved in the agricultural and food industries: Piccioni Bros. Mushroom Farm Ltd., $47,697 to be used for new equipment; Arts and Science Brewing, $13,776 to buy and install a grist mill; Venetian Meat and Salami Co., $100,000 for a new automated packaging line; Puddicombe Cider Company, $154,938 for equipment for waste reduction and increased automation; Denninger’s, $41,596 for new automatic packaging equipment; and Super Sausage 2003 Ltd., $99,400, for new equipment to improve efficiency.

The funding comes from the Growing Forward 2 program created in 2013, a collaboration of the federal and provincial governments. It will be replaced in April by the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, which will distribute about $1.5 billion. Each level of government contributes half of the funding.

Since 2013, upwards of $142 million in cost-share funding has been provided to more than 6,100 projects. “It’s about making investments in ideas and people so that jobs are created,” said Tassi.

McMeekin said agriculture and food is a $4-billion sector in Ontario.

Jahshan said his company, created with wife Tonya, employs about 60 people and has about 38,000 square feet of space in the Ancaster Business Park.