Chinova Bioworks, a Fredericton company striving to develop new preservatives made from chitosan, has emerged from the IndieBio accelerator in Ireland with a relationship with a multi-national juice maker.

The young company, which was spun out of another Fredericton startup, Mycodev, is now working with two different multinationals, which could provide a path to market for the product.

Chinova is developing new applications for chitosan — Mycodev’s main product — and using the compound as the foundation for an anti-microbial agent. The company was already working with a major beverage company to test the product in preserving the shelf life of premium juices before IndieBio. Now it has two relationships.

“We did meet a client so we are working with a multi-national company within Europe,” Chinova co-founder and CEO Natasha Dhayagude said in an interview at the Startup Canada awards ceremony. “Now we’re now working with two multinationals and sending them samples, which they are testing. The tests being done now so we hope to know (the results) within a month.”

Dhayagude was at the Startup Canada regional awards for Atlantic Canada because she won the young entrepreneur category for the Atlantic region. It’s just one piece of good news she has received this year. The former entrepreneurial services coordinator at the Fredericton incubator Planet Hatch became a fellow at Venture for Canada earlier this year.

Then in the spring she found out that her new startup Chinova had been accepted into IndieBio. Acceptance into the accelerator came with a US$100,000 investment from the Princeton, N.J.,-based venture capital firm SOSV, which hosts the life sciences accelerator. And now she’s been recognized by Startup Canada.

The story of Chinova began with Mycodev, a three-year-old company that has found new, environmentally friendly ways of producing high-quality chitosan — a compound sourced from the shells of crustaceans with a range of uses, most often associated with pharmaceutical or biotech industries.

Chinova developed an anti-microbial agent made of Mycodev’s chitosan, and Dhayagude’s team is now working to adapt it into a preservative that will extend the shelf life of premium juices. Beverage companies face the problem of juices having short shelf lives, and consumers don’t want synthesized preservatives in their juice. So Chinova is working on an all-natural product that can be customized to suit the juice in question.

“It’s pretty revolutionary,” Dhayagude, a recent University of University of New Brunswick graduate, said. “There are natural preservatives on the market but no one right now can customize the natural preservative to fit what the customer needs and that is what is unique.”

Now that it has competed the program in Cork, Ireland, the Chinova team is back in Fredericton and working at expanding its network and getting the product out. The benefits of working in Ireland include being plugged into an international network of mentors, and having contact with some of the world’s major food and beverage producers. It is also working on research with the Community College of New Brunswick.

Dhayagude said she is working on raising the company’s first round of funding, probably with a target of about $500,000.