The Southern Ontario Water Consortium, in collaboration with our partners, is preparing an application for funding to a grant program of the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev) called “Investing in Commercialization Partnerships.” We are proposing to create a cluster to consolidate the exceptional assets already in place in the province and greatly enhance the ability for companies to successfully commercialize new water technologies.
The details are still under development, but a key aspect of the proposal is to make funding available to Ontario companies to support commercialization focused projects, which include activities such as prototyping, demonstration, advanced product development, and applied research leading to practical commercial applications. These projects must be in partnership with a postsecondary institution, and can take advantage of the SOWC facilities, SOWC research expertise, or other services and facilities available in the province. The availability of FedDev funding (if approved) could provide up to a 1:1 match with cash or in-kind contribution required by the company. Each company-led project would be limited in benefiting from a total of $100,000 from the program, but could also leverage funding from other sources.
The detailed proposal will have to include specific proposed projects from companies. We would like to invite you to work with us to outline a potential project to support the proposal. There is no commitment of funds; this is for the purposes of developing our proposal. There is no obligation to move forward with the project if the proposal is unsuccessful or if funding is awarded.
We are working collaboratively with WaterTAP, Centre for Alternative Wastewater Treatment and others to advance this proposal. In addition to outlining potential R&D and demonstration projects, we are canvassing for interest by companies in accessing other business services that are available.
If you are interested, please fill out a basic project outline form and return it to us by April 7th, 2014 so that we can include it with our funding application. Please fill out as much detail as possible, but don’t worry if there is information that you can’t provide at this point.
We will not submit anything to FedDev without confirming final information with you. We are happy to help with this. Please contact us if you have further questions or would like to set up a time to discuss further.