Federal investment of $2.94 million will double BioNeutra’s manufacturing capacity, enabling this growing firm to capitalize on global consumer demands and better compete in global markets.

Token Naturals is a cannabis company located in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, focused on extraction and derivative products 

When Keenan Pascal and Jamie Shtay decided to found Token Naturals, a cannabis company focused on extraction and derivative products, they never imagined that they would also become the Edmonton Region’s first local bitters company. They certainly didn’t expect to have a reach that extends beyond the region both nationally and internationally and into markets as far off as Japan. However, that is exactly what they did.   

Initially, the pair was focused on developing their patented extraction process with help from the vast array of talent available from the oil and gas industry that exists in the Edmonton region. Once this was complete, the Token Naturals team found themselves in a bit of a holding period as they moved through the process of licensing phases to sell legal cannabis products with Health Canada. 

A new concept is born 

Keenan and Jamie already had strong ties to the restaurant and bar community in the region and with another founder’s background in chemical engineering and molecular science, an idea was hatched to develop a line of bitters from locally sourced ingredients and the concept behind Token Bitters was born.  

“The process for extraction to produce bitters is essentially the same as the technology we developed for our cannabis extraction business,” said Token Naturals CEO, Keenan Pascal. “We thought this would be a good way to test out and practice our process.” 

What began as a pet project, immediately garnered a positive response within the local region and in just 4 years Token Bitters has resulted in a product that is sold nationally across Canada, exported to Japan, at the precipice of export to Mexico and Europe and has a view to further expansion in international markets. 

Extending the reach of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region 

Each of Token Bitters products is named after beloved Edmonton landmarks. Strathcona Orange is named after the beloved historic neighbourhood, and Whyte Lavender takes its name from the location of co-founder Pascal’s first bartending job. 

Exporting these products is also sharing the stories of this region across the globe.  

Despite the success found in their bitters line, the Token team has not lost sight of the vision for their cannabis extraction business. 

Banking on the Edmonton Metropolitan Region for success 

Co-founder and CEO of Token Naturals, Keenan Pascal is an enthusiastic advocate for the Edmonton Metropolitan Region and what it has to offer. 

“The Edmonton Metropolitan Region has everything we need to build success for our organization,” says Pascal. “Here, we have access to a skilled, young, and eager workforce with plentiful experience in agriculture, manufacturing, and processing. The provincial and municipal governments in the region have traditionally included some of the most proactive and pro-business attitudes. For us, this has been the perfect culmination of the forces required to lead an industry. It’s my opinion that this is the best city to live in and the best city to work in.” 

The idea behind Token Naturals began in Vancouver, but when it came time to decide where the new organization would choose to invest, the founders decided that the Edmonton Metropolitan Region had what they needed to find success. 

Currently, Token Naturals is a late-stage Licensed Producer applicant with Health Canada. The organization recently began construction of an extraction facility that will have the capacity to process 65,000 kg of cannabis flower each year into extracted and derivative products like oils and edibles. The facility is set to open in August 2020. The completion of the refinery facility will allow Token to move forward with their Licensed Producer application from Conditional Approval to a Standard Processor license. 

“We wouldn’t be about to round this corner if not for the supportive environment that exists in the Edmonton region as well as the forward-thinking policies of the provincial and municipal governing bodies,” says Pascal. 

Growing new markets for Canada’s fruit industry

When you bite into a haskap berry and break through the purple-blue skin, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever tasted. The tangy tartness cuts through the sweet juice to overwhelm your tastebuds, and before you know it you’re devouring handful after handful. 

Andrew Rosychuk describes haskap berries as “three-quarters blueberry, one-quarter raspberry, with undertones of black currant and elderberry.”

But haskap’s are better, because there’s three times the antioxidants and five times the anti-inflammatories than in a blueberry, he says. 

The global blueberry market is projected to reach $4.5 billion U.S. by 2024, growing at a CAGR of 6.7% according to Mordor Intelligence LLP. That growth is largely driven by increased demand in Asia and Europe where the desire for fresh and healthy berries is increasing faster than production. 

Even with a small initial market share, the potential for haskap berries is substantial.

A common goal

Rosychuk owns Rosy Farms, a haskap orchard in Edmonton Metropolitan Region’s Sturgeon County. It’s an area with rich farmland, predictable weather, and easy access to global food supply chains.

Rosychuk’s passion for horticulture began as a child, scribbling down notes as he watched Canadian Gardener. That curiosity stuck with him and in 2005 he began planting on his aunt and uncle’s farm just outside Willingdon, Alberta. 

“I planted sour cherries, currants and haskaps as an experiment. I found out that the bugs love the currents, the cherries got eaten by the deer, and I fell in love with the haskaps,” Rosychuk says. 

Rosychuk, who’s spent over ten years working in the trades, bought the 76 acres of land that make up Rosy Farms in 2015. Now he has 26,000 haskap bushes growing there. 

The Alberta-based entrepreneur knew that in order to make the haskap berry industry successful in Canada, farmers would have to work together towards one common goal. 

So he founded the Haskap Alberta Association and also teamed up with 13 other producers to help create North 49 Fruit Corporation, a producer-owned marketing and sales company.

“North 49 is a one of a kind business because it is 100% farmer owned and farmer driven,” says Rosychuk. 

All of the shareholders are aligned, so they have the same caliber of berries, food safety processes and quality assurance processes. 

The Haskap Alberta Association also contributes towards building that unified voice for haskaps, which Rosychuk says is important to educate new growers and gain respect from the government. 

‘Extremely viable’ 

Looking forward, Rosychuk wants to transform the fruit industry in Canada and build long-term relationships around the world for haskap farming stability.

“We’ve never had any industry like this in the prairies before, it’s always been annual agriculture. This is an opportunity to do something different and it is extremely viable,” he says. 

“It’s a blank slate, but it’s not just a blank slate where everything has to start from scratch — it’s a better blueberry.”

Rosychuk says the next step for the industry is to establish the distribution and processing systems that are needed to support haskap production in Alberta.  

Luckily, the Edmonton region has expertise and a competitive advantage in shipping fresh fruits to Asia. 

A large percentage of Western Canada and northwestern U.S. cherries ship to Asia through the Edmonton International Airport. That’s due to the combination of quick flying times to Asia, regular food-focused cargo routes, and expertise in handling fresh fruits, produce, meats, and other temperature and time sensitive products. 

Rosychuk plans to build a processing facility at Rosy Farms this fall which will be scalable. 

That’s his focus as a 2020 Nuffield Scholar, an award that recognizes agricultural leaders around the world. 

Rosychuk will be exploring the “value in developing on-farm, medium scale processing units giving the primary producer an advantage in capitalizing a value added ingredient or product,” according to the Nuffield Canada website. 

In addition to building the new facility, Rosychuk expects to process enough haskap berries in 2020 to break-even, five years after beginning his operation at Rosy Farms. 

“When it comes to unique scalability, it’s the power of the haskap and it’s 100% local,” Rosychuk says. 

Over the winter, haskaps can endure up to minus 50 degrees celsius. The bushes will flower in May, facing downwards to prevent water from collecting and freezing during the chilly spring nights. 

By July, they’ll be ready to be harvested. 

Until then, Rosychuk will continue to build up the industry by sharing the story of the resilient haskap berry, the north’s newest superfood.

It’s mid-morning on a Tuesday and Ritchie Market at 76 Avenue and 95 Street is bustling. People are lined up to order pour-overs from the coffee bar. The bakery does a brisk business in pastries. Butchers break down fresh meat. A pleasant din rises from tables in a central open area and the adjoining restaurant, Biera.

Greg Zeschuk owns the market, Biera and Blind Enthusiasm Brewing Company, the market’s anchor. As he arrives, sporting jeans, a t-shirt and a salt-and-pepper beard, several people greet him by name. 

“I don’t come in and feel excessive pride or anything. I just kinda go, ‘OK great, it’s busy, back to work.’ I kind of have a relentless pursuit for the next thing,” Zeschuk says.

His modest demeanour belies a sensational career: Zeschuk is the co-founder of famed video game company BioWare, and is a retired family doctor with a medical degree from the University of Alberta. In 2018, Zeschuk was named a member of the Order of Canada, the nation’s top civilian honour.

His foray into brewing began with The Beer Diaries, a YouTube show he hosted while living between Edmonton and Austin, and running Bioware’s Texas studio.

“I’d met a lot of the brewers and entrepreneurs that were making beer, and I really fell in love with the concept of it. It was a very creative and dynamic field.” 

By 2007, Zeschuk and co-founder Ray Muzyka had sold Bioware to Electronic Arts (EA), one of the world’s largest video game companies. They both exited BioWare in 2012 and remain in Edmonton.

“I thought, if I’m staying, I’m going to do something fun,” he says. He knew he wanted to build something, and was intrigued by small, neighbourhood breweries he’d seen in Denver and elsewhere, and by the piazzas of Italy.

Ritchie Market came together in a “complex, organic manner,” Zeschuk says. Local, independent businesses heard what he was doing and signed on. It opened in spring 2017.

On this Tuesday morning, Zeschuk is still pumped from the recent launch of Blind Enthusiasm’s latest beer, Measure of Patience. Around 200 people lined up to sample the offering – a barrel-fermented sour beer nearly five years in the making. It spent a year in Sicilian Marsala barrels and six months in the bottle prior to its release.

“It comes out as a more acidic, more wine-like beer. It’s a rare thing, and what’s different for us is, it’s our primary thing, all these unique barrel-aged, barrel-fermented beers,” says Zeschuk.

“The idea of having high-end food with really fine beer is in a handful of places across North America. We’re doing stuff that you would typically find in Toronto, or Chicago, or New York. It shows what you can do here.”

Despite Zeschuk’s technical background, Blind Enthusiasm is an artisanal endeavour.

“There are automation systems that can make 100 times the amount of beer we make in a year in one day, and never touch any ingredients, but that defeats the purpose from our perspective.”

As an example, he points to the Measure of Patience label. “This cutout doesn’t come out right all the time, so sometimes we manually take it off with a razor and place it on again. Stuff like that, which is not good from a business perspective, but it’s part of the love of the process.”

The success of the brewery and the market are intertwined. Zeschuk’s creative streak has tapped into a community ethos hungry for public space to embrace collectivism, and beat back isolationism.   

He’s noticed more regular customers – young and old – and a spinoff effect in the neighbourhood that he hopes will expand to other parts of the city.

“At least a couple hundred people showed up to get this beer on a Sunday in Edmonton. That wouldn’t have happened five years ago. It kind of makes you realize hey, there’s great potential.”

Custom-food manufacturer is 'the kitchen behind the kitchen'

Researchers complete genome assembly of durum wheat, identify gene responsible for cadmium accumulation.

University of Alberta biologists identify gene responsible for cadmium accumulation in durum wheat, according to a new study published in Nature Genetics. For humans, consuming cadmium, a toxic metal that accumulates in grain crops, poses serious health risks, including cancer and kidney disease.

“The mechanism responsible for high cadmium accumulation in Canadian varieties of durum wheat has, until now, remained elusive,” said Neil Harris, researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences and co-author on the study. Canada is the world’s leading exporter of durum wheat, providing approximately 50 per cent of global durum exports.

Food safety

Cadmium, which naturally occurs in soil, is absorbed into plants through the roots. The gene—named TdHMA3-B1—produces a metal-transporting protein that stores cadmium in roots preventing its transport up to the shoots and grain. “Our work identified a mutation in TdHMA3-B1 that disrupts its function. Durum wheat varieties with the non-functional TdHMA3-B1 are unable to restrict cadmium transport to the grain,” said Harris.

“A genetic marker for the mutation is now being used to screen all Canadian durum breeding lines, enabling rapid development of low-cadmium durum wheats. As a result, all durum wheat varieties now released in Canada accumulate two to three-fold less cadmium in their grain, thereby increasing the quality and safety of pasta and couscous, the primary products derived from Canadian durum wheat.”

The identification of TdHMA3-B1 is one of many practical applications of how understanding the durum wheat genome can improve food security and safety. Others include improved yield, insect and disease resistance, and resilience to environmental stresses arising from climate change such as heat and drought.

The study was conducted in collaboration with Gregory Taylor, professor, and Kevin Liang, undergraduate student in the department. The paper, “Durum wheat genome highlights past domestication signatures and future improvement targets,” is published in Nature Genetics (doi: 10.1038/s41588-019-0381-3).

Originally posted on: University of Alberta’s blog – Folio