Bolstered by a local partnership agreement, Charlottetown-based Origins Xtractions Ltd. is planning to raise money to finance a new commercial facility in the P.E.I. capital for extracting compounds from natural materials.

The three-year-old company specializes in a process called supercritical extraction, which uses pressurized carbon dioxide in a closed system to draw high-value natural extracts from agricultural and marine resources. It is mainly using the process to offer services to clients, but it is working toward having its own commercial production facility. It recently signed a deal with another P.E.I. biotech research contractor, BioFoodTech, to do joint analysis for clients.

Assuming the financing falls into place, the commercial facility should be built in the next 18 months in Charlottetown’s BioCommons Research Park.

The facility will use different types of material, but its first project may be extracting omega-3 from blue mussels in high enough volumes to meet commercial demand. Omega-3 is a fatty acid found in fish oil and is known to help prevent heart disease.

“We’re working with an extraction partner from Germany and the National Research Council and we’ve already done the extraction,” Origins Xtractions chief operating officer David Campbell said in an interview. “The National Research Council is now doing the analysis. So far, the results are very good.”

He added: “The nice thing about the blue mussel is it’s a sustainable supply. There are about 50 million pounds grown on P.E.I. each year.”

Campbell said the company now has the capacity to do pilot programs in extracting omega-3 from the shellfish, but it needs to build a facility in order to produce commercial amounts. He declined to say how much funding would be required to complete the commercial facility.

Campbell and his team envision a facility that can extract compounds from a range of marine and agricultural feedstocks. It has identified 20 crops that can produce bioactive compounds and can be grown in Atlantic Canada.

For example, it is currently testing the extraction process on a plant called angelica, which is native to Europe and grows well in places like P.E.I. and Cape Breton.

“We’re planting field trials this summer,” said Campbell. “It’s actually a weed, but the root has been used for hundreds of years for medicinal purposes.”

Origins Xtractions has its own test and pilot facilities in Boston, and it is now working with BioFoodTech, which has similar facilities in Charlottetown. Campbell said the collaboration will allow both companies to expand their client base throughout North America.

“We offer our extraction services to clients who are interested in going after the bioactive compounds, and this collaborative agreement with BioFoodTech will now allow us to offer extraction services in Canada,” he said.

Origins Xtractions is now developing its business within Emergence, the new biosciences accelerator that the P.E.I. BioAlliance has opened.

As PropelICT is doing for information technology companies, Emergence aims to work with life sciences companies to develop robust business models and increase revenues.