TrendiTech Inc. raises seed funding to accelerate its technology
by CM Staff
At the core TrendiTech's robotics technology, which currently includes The Smoothie Machine and BioTrim.
VANCOUVER — TrendiTech Inc. (Trendi), a Canadian robotics start-up dedicated to rescuing and upcycling food waste into other products, announced it has raised additional seed funding of $6.2 million CAD for its agri-food technology, bringing its accumulative seed round total to $8.45 million CAD. The funding was led by current investors WGG Capital Canada and Florida’s Vestech Partners.
“Trendi continues to impress and excite me with their forethought for the future, in solving a huge global problem, food waste,” says Herbert Madan of WGG Capital Canada. “My conviction is that the problem has only gotten worse. At the same time, parts of the world are going through dire food supply issues. Not only does Trendi’s BioTrim solve the problem of food waste, but they are also helping to build solutions and sustainability in food security.”
Trendi was founded in 2019 and just last spring was named a semi-finalist in the Government of Canada’s Food Waste Reduction Challenge. It has since built a team of technologists, scientists, engineers, marketers, and food waste people to try and build on initiatives for the company, including The Pledge to Stop Food Waste. At its core is its robotics technology, which currently includes The Smoothie Machine and BioTrim.
Trendi BioTrim units rescue misfit fruits and vegetables before they’re wasted and convert them into shelf-stable products. Each model reportedly uses various end-to-end processing technologies, such as UV and ozone cleaning, dicing, pureeing, and drying techniques to create nutrient-rich material, either in fragment or powder form called BioFlakes. Both are reportedly about 1/10th the original weight and size and retain up to 97 percent of their original nutrients, flavours and colour.
Trendi currently has three BioTrim models in development, servicing a variety of industries, from farms and manufacturers to distributors. These include the BT80, a modular mobile unit that can drive directly to the source and access many remote sites; the BT2500, a micro processing plant built directly on-site at the source, such as a farm, with variable sizing options; and the BT25000, a standalone macro processing plant that can process food waste from a variety of sources on a large scale and designed to service a community of farms or facilities.
