Food manufacturer to build $7-million Quebec R&D centre

Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Que. – Group Biscuits Leclerc has announced it will invest more than $7 million to build a new Innovation, Research and Development Centre.

The Centre will be three storeys, with a 32,000-sq.-ft. surface, and will feature cutting-edge technology and a room for scientific documentation. It will be dedicated to innovation in cookies and healthy nutritious snacks. Food technologists will also be working on products to prevent certain chronic diseases, and to improve the “Friendship Cookie,” designed to help feed people in the developing world.

“We have already taken considerable steps with the introduction of the Vital brand in 2002 and with the Praeventia brand in 2008 which have now become popular product lines because of their nutritious benefits,” says president of the Board of Directors Jean-Robert Leclerc. “We are now working on the development of products which will not only prevent diseases but also heal them.”

Attached by a footbridge to the company’s Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Que. headquarters and to one of its manufacturing facilities, the new Centre will also boast health and fitness facilities for all staff and their family members.