Canadian Innovation Week is an opportunity to celebrate

Pulse Electric Field (PEF) 

Cavendish Farms is doing its part to reduce water and energy consumption. At its potato processing plants, the company use Pulse Electric Field (PEF) equipment which is an emerging method that uses short bursts of electricity for food processing. This method requires up to 75% less water usage and 90% less energy to run.

Lift Lab

The Lift Lab is a new facility developed by Irving Equipment that allows their team of 7 engineers, ranging from planning engineers to research and development engineers, to come together and collaborate on solving unique problems and innovative projects. 

They use cutting edge techniques such as HoloLens, to develop their Augmented Reality tools to take their lift plans to the next level. The Lift Lab was even featured in the latest season of Oak Island helping to brainstorm on plans to uncover treasure.

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) Technology 

New Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology is providing even more detailed terrain mapping, forest inventory and operational planning improvements for Irving Woodlands. LiDAR is like an MRI of the forest, we use it to measure dozens of forest characteristics like tree height, number of trees and more. It is so accurate that we can know the height of a tree to within 10 cm and depressions on the ground to within 3 cm! This new level of accuracy is allowing us to plan at a much higher level of detail than ever before for multiple values.

This is how it's used to protect Water:

Hydra-Slide Jacking and Skidding Technology 

Continuing to enhance our Royal Tissue product with new technology, Irving Tissue Saint John had a new Yankee dryer installed. A Yankee dryer weighs 53 tons and is primarily used to remove excess moisture from pulp that is about to be converted into paper. Installing the new Yankee dryer at Irving Tissue in Saint John would have previously meant cutting into the building and lifting through the roof with a mobile crane. Thanks to the team at Irving Equipment, their new Hydra-Slide jacking and skidding technology maneuvered the Yankee dryer without any invasive measures.

Adaptive Resolution Imaging Sonar

The ARIS Sonar project is focused on developing an automated method for the estimation of the returning run of Atlantic salmon on the Miramichi River.  The technology provides an accurate and near real-time count of ascending Atlantic salmon, as well as other large fish, and it provides size distribution estimates of the migrating fish in all conditions, including low visibility such as nighttime and high-water-level conditions.  JDI is pleased to fund this technology for CAST (Collaboration for Atlantic Salmon Tomorrow).

From Landfill to Green Energy

Potato scraps from Cavendish Farms in New Annan, PEI are now a source of green energy from one of North America’s largest biogas plants.

Generating biogas has meant a 30 per cent reduction in fuel oil and a 35,000 tonne reduction in greenhouse gases — the equivalent of taking 7,300 cars off the road for one year.

Innovative technology is what drives our company forward to improve our business and safeguard the environment.  

Read the CBC story here.

3D Printing

To remain competitive in today’s world, Canadian manufacturers need to adopt innovative new technologies, including additive metal manufacturing processes.   We’re proud to be part of Canada’s first research center for metal 3D printing for the marine and defense industries. The Marine Additive Manufacturing Centre of Excellence (MAMCE) was launched by the University of New Brunswick, in partnership with Custom Fabricators and Machinists (CFM) and community colleges in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The center combines research, commercialization and workforce development and training, and is the first in the country to use metal 3D printing to manufacture certified custom parts for the marine sector. 

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. In an additive process an object is created by laying down successive layers of material until the object is created. Each of these layers can be seen as a thinly sliced horizontal cross-section of the eventual object.