NGen provides $3.5M to fund to two COVID-19 projects

HAMILTON — Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen) has announced an additional $3.5 million in project funding in support of Canada’s COVID-19 response.

DMF Medical Inc., based in Dartmouth, NS, is working towards a regulatory and manufacturing fast track of memsorb, a medical-membrane based CO₂ filtration technology that repurposes anesthesia machines to act as closed-loop ICU ventilators. The membranes eliminate the mandatory replacement and monitoring of chemical absorption components and allows for continuous use while eliminating performance issues related to chemical absorbers.

LuminUltra Technologies Ltd., based in Fredericton, NB, has developed both diagnostic and environmental testing solutions. The company is providing the reagents needed for 500,000 tests/week for the Canadian testing program and recently introduced environmental monitoring solutions. They test for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on surfaces, air and in wastewater to facilitate non-invasive surveillance testing of populations.

Supercluster funding will support advanced manufacturing scale-up with a new facility that further grows capacity to meet national and international demand for the company’s testing technologies.

Since the launch of its COVID-19 response program in March, NGen has funded 20 projects valued at over $54 million.

“Our latest round of funding exemplifies the ingenuity and advanced capabilities that have been leveraged to deploy innovative solutions from coast to coast,” says Jayson Myers, NGen’s CEO.

In June, NGen launched Made Smarter, a Strategic Supply Challenge. It will allocate up to $30 million to co-invest in projects that focus on strengthening Canadian manufacturing and supply chain capabilities.

NGen is a not-for-profit that leads Canada’s Advanced Manufacturing Supercluster. Its mandate is to help build world-leading advanced manufacturing capabilities.