Ontario company moving to CBU.
SYDNEY — It was just in November when an egg recall across Atlantic Canada had consumers scrambling to their refrigerators to check date and production information to avoid the potential to get sick.
The possibility of salmonella in those eggs led to a mass recall of the product but a soon to be Sydney-based company is working on methods to head off such issues at the source before food reaches a supermarket floor.
Kraken Sense has created an automated pathogen detection platform for food producers and water companies that includes sensors to detect bacterial contamination in real-time.
“We are definitely a rare case in the sense that we are mixing nanotechnology with biotechnology with machine learning and it is with support from various universities and research council partners,” said company co-founder and CEO Nisha Sarveswaran. “We are very unique in that everybody else uses a culturebased method for testing. That means they can’t have it in food processing because you don’t want to have crosscontamination and things like that. We are not growing the bacteria at all and therefore we can have it actually just off the conveyer belt sampling constantly. It’s a very simple process that’s affordable and fully Canadian made.”
Sarveswaran said their innovation allows for small batch testing, instead of just once a day. Smaller batch testing means a problem can be addressed quicker and eliminates the need for a food processor to lose an entire batch.
The two-year-old startup is currently based in Mississauga, Ont., but is expected to complete a move to the Verschuren Centre at Cape Breton University this summer.
“CBU and Verschuren Centre are really making huge headways in this industry, especially in biotech,” Sarveswaran said in a phone interview with the Cape Breton Post. “They have a lot of amazing equipment that is right for biotechnology companies — the bio-reactor, and the bio-safety lab they are putting in is incredible.”
Beth Mason, President of the Verschuren Centre for Sustainability in Energy and Environment said Kraken Sense is one of a growing number of companies coming from across North America interested in the Verschuren Centre and access to its versatile and responsive business model that’s “wrapped around” world-class assets.
“We are one of only a few places in Canada to provide a technology platform in the form of complex pilot-scale bio-reactors that are needed to scale microbial production capacity,” Mason told the Post. “This is accompanied by a dedicated suite of analytical equipment and personnel to help companies to test and prove out their new products for customers in the marketplace. These include products like the pathogen detection units of Kraken, to functional ingredients, natural crop protection products and green chemicals.”
Kraken Sense currently has five employees and is actively searching for three more to work in Sydney.
On Wednesday, the company was also named one of 18 startups to receive seed funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada.
Sarveswaran said that seed funding will help them look at ways to reduce food waste by ensuring that food is safe.
“It is really going to be focused on trying to reduce the overall carbon footprint while making sure everything is lower cost and easily more accessible.”
Other Atlantic Canadian seed fund recipients include Duxion Motors, an advanced motor design and manufacturing company in St. John’s that is developing next-generation electric propulsion systems for aircraft and UAVS.
Nexus Robotics in Halifax was another recipient for its autonomous robot that uses a camera system to differentiate between weeds and crops.
Marine protective coatings producer Graphite Innovation and Technologies in Dartmouth was also granted seed funding this week.