Plant Protein Alliance of Alberta organizing for 2019

The Plant Protein Alliance of Alberta (PPAA) is a year-old organization that is interested in expanding the manufacturing of Southern Alberta crops.

“Instead of selling the crops off as commodities, the idea is to do some manufacturing with them here,” explains Alan Hal, COO of the Plant Protein Alliance of Alberta (PPAA).

“There's a fair number of companies that are interested in maybe expanding their facilities. Some are even building new facilities. The alliance was formed to sort of help that to happen.”

Hal says membership in the PPAA includes a mix of companies, industry organizations, farm groups, municipal governments, economic development groups, investor groups, and banks.

Hal believes if all the groups start working together, they can accelerate their progress towards their common goal.

In order to bring awareness about Southern Alberta’s crop potential to foreign markets, the Alliance is holding several events in the coming months.

A workshop themed ‘Growing Diversification: The Plant Protein Opportunity’ had a meeting in Calgary on May 8 in Calgary and was featured again on May 15 in Edmonton.

An Agri-Food Innovation Council (AIC) Agri-food Innovation Summit was held on May 13 in Ottawa, while an AGRI Tech Venture Forum was scheduled to be held on May 15 in Toronto.

The highlight event of the year, according to the Plant Protein Alliance of Alberta’s website, is Protein Summit 2019. The first summit will be held in Saskatoon from May 29-31 and the next one will be held from June 3-5 in Calgary.

“This summit has existed for the last 10 years, but has always been held around Europe,” Hal pointed out.

“However, we were successful in getting it to be held here for the first time. The commercial companies are going to be getting together and talking about this whole opportunity and whether or not they want to do business here in Alberta or on the prairies.”

Hal says during the Summit, those in attendance will look at the crops that are grown on the prairies, what they have done as individual companies to take our crops and manufacture different products.

The idea behind the Summit, Hal says, is to have people within the industry talk to each other and stimulate interest.

“What the alliance is really trying to do is really get people talking to each other rather than just staying in her own groups,” Hal said.

For more information on the Plant Protein Alliance of Alberta, visit: https://ppaa.ca/