Halifax supplements startup Infusd Nutrition has signed a partnership agreement with another, more mature life sciences company nearby in P.E.I., Natures Crops International.

Infusd, the creation of lawyer Jack MacDonald and chemical engineer David Giffin, has developed a process to make fat-soluble nutrients, such as omega-3 fatty acids and many vitamins, water soluble. The company uses the technology to produce supplement additives for other companies to add to their own drinks, supplements or other products.

Natures Crops, meanwhile, has been operating since 2004 and is the producer of a substance trademarked as Ahiflower oil. According to Health Canada, that means oil from the seeds of a plant colloquially called corn gromwell, native to Europe and Asia. Rich in omega-3s, its taste is sometimes described as nutty.

“In a market that has seen rapidly rising costs for omega-3 ingredients, a carrier system that enables greater bioavailability of the active ingredient in foods and beverages means meeting daily omega-3 intake goals can be achieved at considerably lower costs,” said Giffin in a statement.

The taste of Ahiflower oil is important, Infusd said in a press release, because consumer objections to omega three supplements have traditionally included flavours that some find offensive. The company believes Ahiflower’s market positioning also benefits from it being plant-based, unlike most competing products, which tend to be made from fish.

“With the Infusd Nutrition platform’s next-generation solubility gains, we’re excited to see many new consumer-facing food and beverage niches filled with delicious, convenient, and highly stable plant-based omega-3-6-9 offerings addressing, for example, kids' nutrition, healthy aging, and active lifestyles,” said Natures Crops CEO Andrew Hebard.

In December, Infusd Co-Founder MacDonald said the company would sell its technology under a licensing model, adapting its processes to match the needs of ingredient producers at its research and development facility in Windsor, N.S.

South of the border, meanwhile, MacDonald and Giffin are pursuing a second revenue stream: producing their own ingredients with the help of a co-manufacturing facility in upstate New York. That plan will likely include working with the cannabis industry, since the companies that make cannabis-infused beverages face similar technical hurdles to those that affect natural flavours and colours, and in a market that is still fast-evolving.

The facility in Windsor is capable of producing 20,000 servings of a given ingredient per day to help Infusd test new formulations and help its licensing clients scale their manufacturing processes, while the New York facility will have capacity for 1 million servings daily. On its website, the company lists 14 product lines.

And in January, Infusd became the only Atlantic Canadian startup out of eight companies to be accepted into this year’s cohort of the federal Trade Commissioner’s Canadian Technology Accelerator for foodtech. The annual program offers innovative food companies training and business development opportunities focusing on exporting to a target region — in the case of the foodtech program California and the Upper Midwest.