U of T startup Genecis receives funding from BDC’s new $400-million clean tech fund
Luna Yu is the CEO of Genecis Bioindustries Inc. The facility in Scarborough converts food waste into biodegradable plastics.
The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is launching its second fund dedicated to supporting clean tech, with a $400 million CAD fund.
“Climate Tech Fund II, as it is called, will invest in Canadian climate tech firms that are at the scale-up or commercialization stages. The goal is to scale and deploy low-carbon technologies to help Canada meet its GHG emissions reduction targets. Already, Fund II has made its first investment in Genecis, a biotechnology company making compostable plastics from waste materials. BDC added it will be making other investment announcements soon.” Reports BetaKit.
Genecis is a biotechnology company making compostable plastics from waste materials. PHAs (polyhydroxyalkanoates) are recognized as the only biodegradable polymers that can mimic the useful functional properties of petroleum plastics. Genecis’ unique approach to biomanufacturing PHAs with alternative feedstocks is low-cost, widely applicable, and rapidly scalable. Their recombinant bacteria platform converts zero-cost food waste into tunable PHAs, and piggy-backs onto the existing infrastructure of biogas plants. Genecis is a graduate of the Y Combinator incubator program in Silicon Valley, and has won multiple international awards, including 1st place in the 2020 Extreme Tech Challenge.