Freshr Technologies: The Science of Shelf Life and the Push to Reduce Global Food Waste

When Dr. Mina Mekhail talks about Freshr Technologies, the Halifax-based start-up he founded, he often sums up its value proposition in three words: “We sell time.” It’s a deceptively simple phrase for a company tackling one of the food industry’s most complex problems – the perishability of high-value proteins.  

By developing an innovative coating applied to packaging films, Freshr extends the shelf life of products like salmon and premium beef by several days. For processors, retailers, and global supply chains, those few extra days can translate into millions of dollars saved, reduced emissions, and significantly less food waste.

Before launching Freshr, Mekhail built his foundation as a biomaterials scientist, earning a master’s from the University of Western Ontario and a PhD from McGill University. Like many researchers, he saw exciting technologies born in academia, only to watch them struggle to find a meaningful application. He wanted to start with a global issue he cared deeply about.

“In academia, we tend to develop new technologies and then try to figure out where to plug them in. But I knew I wanted to use my biomaterials expertise, and I knew I wanted to solve a big problem. I was very passionate about food waste.”  

He joined a start-up incubator that taught customer discovery – a process many first-time founders skip. The experience reshaped his perspective. Instead of guessing what the market needed, he began interviewing farmers, food processors, and industry veterans to understand their biggest pain points.

His first idea was a sprayable coating for fresh fruits and vegetables, which was a solution with scientific potential but limited commercial viability. After conversations with growers, he realized that unless his product was “very, very cheap,” it wouldn’t succeed. And for premium seafood buyers, spray-on coatings raised concerns about additives and labelling.

“They weren’t very excited about the idea of spraying food directly. People who are buying salmon or premium seafood don’t want any additives on their food.”  

Instead of applying the technology directly to food, Mekhail asked a simple but transformative question: What if nothing went on the food at all?

“Everything is on the packaging itself. This is when there was a clear product-market fit.”  

Turning the idea into a scalable technology was a multi-year journey. The company raised several rounds of funding – from friends and family, angels, and eventually a pre-seed and seed round – and slowly built the technical foundation for their coating and production process.

“We went ahead and developed the technology. It took us many years. Now we’re at the regulatory level, getting approvals so we can go commercial.”  

Image

Today, the company is focused on three major milestones: scaling production to 150,000 square metres of coated film per year, securing regulatory approval from both the FDA and Health Canada, and signing at least five commercial agreements contingent on achieving the first two goals.

Their latest seed round allowed them to expand their team and accelerate progress toward these objectives. Many of their partners have been working with them for four or five years, creating a pipeline of commercial opportunities ready to activate once approvals are secured.

One of the company’s most significant milestones came through a global competition hosted by Greentown Labs in 2021. Freshr was selected as one of only six companies – and the only Canadian firm – to collaborate with The Mitsubishi Chemical Group.

The partnership began with proof-of-concept work: Mitsubishi sent their packaging film, Freshr applied its coating, and together they tested results on both seafood and beef.

Image

From there, the relationship expanded rapidly. Mitsubishi’s venture arm, Diamond Edge Ventures, served as the connective tissue between the two companies and later invested in Freshr’s seed round. Today, Freshr and Mitsubishi are executing a Joint Development Agreement (JDA), with Mitsubishi testing the coated film extensively among their Japanese customer base.

“We’ve been getting very good results,” Mekhail says. “It’s been a great partnership. The idea is to consolidate that even more and get a licensing agreement signed.”  

Freshr wasn’t always a Nova Scotia company. Originally founded in Montreal in 2017, it was exposure to the region through Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) Atlantic that created a turning point. When the pandemic hit, he made the decision to relocate the company to Dartmouth, where they set up operations.  

Through CDL, Mekhail met members of the Invest Nova Scotia team and the connection proved invaluable. Invest Nova Scotia went on to lead both Freshr’s pre-seed and seed rounds, and provided critical support through venture services, sector expertise, and an extended network of industry connections.  

“I think Invest Nova Scotia helped us in a big way. They backed us after the CDL program, and we brought in several angel investors from across Atlantic Canada as well. I don’t think we’d be here without that support.”

"Freshr embodies our investment thesis at Invest Nova Scotia: translating deep scientific breakthroughs into high-impact commercial applications," says Jen Fuccillo, Investment Director at Invest Nova Scotia. "The company is working hard to bring a technology with substantial economic and environmental potential to the packaging industry and securing a global strategic partner like Mitsubishi at this stage is great validation.”

In the next few years, Freshr aims to finalize regulatory approvals, significantly scale its production capacity, activate commercial agreements across North America, Asia, Europe, and South America, and rapidly increase sales in order to achieve profitability.  

“We are prioritizing speed to market. We want to start generating revenue as soon as possible.”  

Despite being anchored in Nova Scotia, Freshr is already a global company in terms of partnerships and customer interest. With projects in Japan, the US, the UK, and an emerging partnership in Brazil, the company is poised for its next phase: commercial scale.

Freshr Technologies represents the kind of start-up story other founders can learn from: start with a problem, validate early, listen to your customers, and keep evolving. But Mekhail doesn’t sugarcoat the realities of entrepreneurship, especially in the deep tech sector.

“The life of a start-up is all about managing struggles. It’s all problem-solving on the go.”  

He describes the experience as “building a plane in the middle of a flight.” Every week brings a new technical, regulatory, logistical, or economic challenge – many outside his control.

What keeps him moving forward? Perseverance and proof the market needs what Freshr is building.

“We get a lot of people reaching out to us saying they want our product. That is actually what keeps me pushing through – I know there’s a market for this.”