Smart Skin Technologies raises $10.7M CAD
by CM Staff
The company expects to hire up to 50 new employees in the next year, primarily in Fredericton, New Brunswick, more than doubling its workforce.
FREDERICTON — Smart Skin Technologies Inc., a company involved in IIoT productivity solutions, raised $10.7 million CAD to try and accelerate the company’s growth in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Smart Skin supports 18 of the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies and major bottling companies with their Quantifeel(TM) solutions, designed to improve production efficiency, yield and product quality.
BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund led the financing round. Existing investors including SCHOTT AG, Mariner’s East Valley Ventures and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation also participated in the financing.
“Smart Skin’s success in deploying their technology and delivering quantifiable return on investment to some of the world’s leading corporations is what originally attracted us,” said Joe Regan, Managing Partner of the Industrial Innovation Venture Fund at BDC Capital. “We are excited about the opportunity to play a role in accelerating Smart Skin’s expansion in this important market,” continued Regan. In addition to BDC Capital’s investment, Regan will be joining Smart Skin’s Board of Directors chaired by Gerry Pond of Mariner.
This is the second time that SCHOTT AG has participated in a Smart Skin financing round. SCHOTT is a global leader in specialty glass products, including billions of vials, syringes, and cartridges for a broad variety of pharmaceutical drugs. About 90% of all approved COVID-19 vaccines rely on SCHOTT vials. Fabian Stocker, VP Global Strategy & Innovation for SCHOTT’s pharma business, said, “Smart Skin’s solution gives pharma companies a powerful lever to prevent breakage on their filling lines and boost productivity – and it is a great enhancement to our portfolio. We are more than happy to increase our close cooperation with Smart Skin.”
Smart Skin founder and CTO Kumaran Thillainadarajah commented, “Building a globally significant business would not have been possible without early-stage investors like East Valley and NBIF, as well as a strong innovation partner like the National Research Council’s IRAP program that has allowed us to push the boundaries of what is possible in our product space. We are thrilled to be working with large financial and strategic investors, such as BDC Capital and SCHOTT AG, that want to fuel our mission to make production lines more productive.”
The company expects to hire up to 50 new employees in the next year, primarily in Fredericton, New Brunswick, more than doubling its workforce. Manufacturing, engineering & software development roles will be the company’s primary hiring focus although several sales, marketing, and field support roles are being established as well.
