Success Story: Over $41M awarded in January

The Canadian Government awarded over $24M in business grant and loan support through the Prosperity Initiative to Ontario companies in the month of January.  This support will be used by businesses and not for profits to acquire new capital equipment, improve facilities, create jobs, and support their supply chain. Of this, Mentor Works clients were able to leverage over $9M in support for their projects that will create over 200 new full time permanent positions.

Prosperity Initiative Funding

As part of the 2013 Economic Action Plan, the Government of Canada launched the Prosperity Initiative with over $530M available until 2018. Businesses in Southern Ontario are able to leverage funding through this initiative to support a range of business growth and expansion activities.

There are two main programs in this initiative:

• Investing in Business Growth and Productivity (IBGP): A loan program supporting up to 25% of eligible project expenses to a max of $20M. This program supports business expansion projects.
• Investing in Business Innovation (IBI): A loan program supporting up to 33% of eligible project expenses to a max of $1M. This program supports early-stage businesses who have an innovative or disruptive product that is near market-ready.

January Highlights:

Projects that received funding in January will help support businesses improve production, expand their businesses, create new jobs, and bring new innovative products and processes to market. Highlights from this round of Prosperity funding include:

• Wolf Steel: Wolf Steel will begin manufacturing air conditioning products and expand their existing line of heating products. They will upgrade their manufacturing facilities, and implement technology upgrades. This project will create 176 new full time jobs. They received $4,217,500.
• Koss Aerospace: Koss will install new capital equipment to increase their production ranges for domestic and international clients. This project will create 25 new full time jobs. Koss received $4,985,210.

Prosperity Funding Supports New Programs:

In addition to the $24M awarded to private businesses, the Federal Government also awarded two not-for-profit enterprises with funding to support programs that will help entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses:

• Ontario Centres of Excellence: the OCE was awarded $9,000,000 to support the SmartStart Seed Fund. This program will provide young entrepreneurs with funding for innovative and technology-based solutions.
• Waterloo Accelerator Centre: They received $8,000,000 to support the AC JumpStart program that provides seed funding and skills training to help Waterloo Region companies become more investment-ready

How Mentor Works Can Help You Leverage Funding

Mentor Works, the experts in government funding, can help your business identify funding opportunities to support your projects. We have helped hundreds of businesses obtain grant and loan support for HR & training, research and product development, capital equipment purchases, and consulting and capacity planning.

You can attend one of our free webinars to learn more about funding opportunities for your business. You can also keep up to date with funding news by subscribing to our weekly e-newsletter.