Chinova Bioworks Moves To Larger PEI Location
CHARLOTTETOWN – A New Brunswick biotech company mandated with developing healthier, natural food preservatives and reducing food waste has expanded its footprint in Prince Edward Island.
Chinova Bioworks announced the opening of its new manufacturing space in P.E.I. on Sept. 1, the day of its official grand opening.
The new space is located in the Bioscience Manufacturing Incubator (BMI), a facility operated by the PEI BioAlliance, a private-sector non-profit organization mandated with the growth of P.E.I.’s bioscience industry.
The move to the state-of-the-art, environmentally and eco-friendly berth at the BMI will allow Chinova to scale its capacity up twenty times, to accommodate the expansion from its first pilot-scale production in Charlottetown.
“We moved to scale up our operations further and keep up with volume demand from our clients. This move will really help us meet high-quality standards of manufacturing ingredients that the customers we work with expect,” said Co-Founder and CEO Natasha Dhayagude.
“Both volume and revenue have grown quite a bit for us, so we’re making sure we can keep up on the manufacturing side.”
Chinova, headquartered in Fredericton, is now renting a 6,000-square-foot berth in the 20,000-square-foot BMI. It has expanded its capacity to produce a line of natural food preservatives made from extract from the white button mushroom.
“We developed a natural preservative that is extracted from the stems of white button mushrooms that helps to improve the freshness, quality and shelf life of various food and beverage products,” said Dhayagude.
“Our natural preservative replaces a lot of the artificial preservatives we see in a lot of foods today, with something that is natural, clean and fits in with a wide variety of dietary restrictions,” she added, noting that it prevents food spoilage from microorganisms including bacteria, yeast and mould.
Chinova has six product lines in the market and is actively selling preservatives for dairy, plant-based dairy, plant-based meat, sauces, dips, spreads and beverages to a broad base of customers.
Dhayagude said the BMI is essentially a large incubation facility with bays that companies rent out to carry out their operations. She noted it’s going to be an asset to be so close to potential mentors also working with the PEI BioAlliance, and have their potential expertise available.
All of Chinova’s production operations occur in Charlottetown. Previously, the company was working out of the BioFoodTech Facility.
The move to a bigger footprint follows Chinova’s $6-million round of Series-A funding raised in June, led by venture capital firms DSM Venturing and Rhapsody Venture Partners
“It’s a huge upgrade from our pilot with this new square footage and scale-up in volume as to what we can produce as well,” she said.
The BMI is located in the BioCommons Industrial park on Regis Ruffy Drive in Charlottetown, and owned by the Charlottetown Area Development Corporation
The move and expansion it entails will require Chinova to hire more staff, both in P.E.I. and New Brunswick.
“We went from a team of 10 and now we’re about 35 and growing. We’ll be hiring about 10 more positions as we continue to scale up in P.E.I.,” Dhayagude said.
Chinova will also be hiring between seven and 10 sales marketing and research and development positions in Fredericton.
Chinova’s move was facilitated by the federal government, via the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), which provided a $250,000 loan for the purchase of manufacturing equipment to be used in Chinova’s new space.
Chinova was founded in 2016 by Dhayagude, whose background is in biochemistry and David Brown, with a background in microbiology, after they met at an entrepreneurship accelerator and incubator center in Fredericton.
“We both had an interest in science and commercializing something that would help solve a real-world problem,” said Dhayagude.
“We came across mushrooms and they are able to do so much more than just act as a great source of food or protein.”
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].