NB BioMatrix, the New Brunswick cleantech company that won the BioInnovation Challenge last autumn, is developing into a bona fide business by adding staff and planning to launch late this year.
The Saint John company is using nano-technology to develop a biodegradable, anti-bacterial liquid that can remove heavy metals and other pollutants from waste water. The product, called Naqua-Pure, binds with water-soluble particles such as heavy metals and non-soluble components such as oil. It then uses electromagnetic forces to remove the material from water.
Founded by CEO Jeff Jennings and Chief Science Officer Keith Brunt, the company is now expanding by hiring a researcher, Kim Clarke, to help with the development of the product. The hiring is being carried out in collaboration with the Health and Environments Research Centre Laboratory at Dalhousie University, and Mitacs, a program that encourages research partnerships between academia and industry. The University of New Brunswick has also been a partner with the company.
“I really like involving co-op students and interns in the company,” said Brunt, an assistant professor at Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick. “They are so bright and open to possibility – it’s like a booster-shot of energy when they are around. Engaging our first full time staff adds to that magic and accelerates NBBM towards commercialization."
NB BioMatrix – whose tagline is “Solutions for Contaminated Solutions” -- said in a statement that Brewer will be focused on supporting the advancement of Naqua-Pure. With a PhD in chemical engineering, she will work on the scale-up of the manufacturing process and establish quality assurance protocols for the end consumer.
“We’ve got some early product prototypes and are working on the manufacturing and the chemistry in order to ramp it up,” said Jennings in an interview last week.
He and Brunt hope to launch Naqua-Pure in the fourth quarter by bringing an initial product to market and then ramping up the manufacturing as revenues come in. Jennings said the target market for the early product will be industrial manufacturing and the pulp and paper industry in Atlantic Canada, though they hope to eventually target a number of industrial processes.
They have been working on a model that calls for initial equity funding of $225,000, but that total could be supplemented by revenues in the early production runs.
The founders have also entered NB BioMatrix in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s Breakthru competition. The top three companies in the contest will receive funding and in-kind services of more than $200,000 each, so a strong showing in Breakthru would help the company a lot.
At the BioInnovation Challenge, a competition for Atlantic Canadian biotech and cleantech companies, Brunt told the judges that Naqua-Pure is a cost-effective product that can remove 98 percent of heavy metals from water within 10 minutes.
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