Medtech company Precision BioLogic and cleantech star CarbonCure Technologies have been honoured at the Halifax Chamber of Commerce’s 2022 Halifax Business Awards. CarbonCure won Innovative Business of the Year and Precision BioLogic won the headline Business of the Year award.

The two Dartmouth startups were part of a roster of innovation-driven companies nominated this year. The nominees for the Innovative Business award included Fintech startup CacheFlo, which recently inked a sales deal with the Chamber, as well as Clean Valley CIC, Side Door and Smarter Spaces. Also honoured with the Export Business of the Year award was Focal Research Consultants — an established consulting firm that pivoted in the middle of the last decade to focus on selling software to help casinos identify and help problem gamblers.

Founded in 1992, Precision BioLogic sells a suite of diagnostic tools for the medical field, many of which freeze test samples to aid in storage and reduce “reconstitution errors” that can result from other methods of preservation. The company acquired Affinity Biologicals of Ancaster, Ont. in 2018.

Precision CEO Paul Empty also narrowly missed out on the Business Leader of the Year award, which ultimately went to Maplewave Senior Vice President of Operations and Delivery Kathleen Jay, whose company is using telecoms infrastructure to facilitate e-commerce.

The Innovative Business award, meanwhile, extends a winning streak for CarbonCure that in 2021 saw it bag US$7.5 million from the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE — a protracted, five-year competition aimed at fostering new applications for carbon dioxide, particularly that obtained through carbon capture. The company's technology has also attracted the attention of high-profile cleantech investors, including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund.