Charlottetown, PE-based CleanBands is building handwashing compliance systems that help workers ensure they are following handwashing policies. The company’s wearables visually indicate handwashing status, and allow for every single hand hygiene event to be tracked. By tracking the status of handwashing, we can create compliance ratings that can be used by operators and processors to ensure standards are met.
CleanBands received $244,977 in funding to develop and commercialize an enterprise-ready hand hygiene solution. The company is piloting the project with various quick-service restaurants in PEI.
We spoke with CEO Dave Iwankow to learn more about the company and its plans.
Q: What is your company’s mission?
A: Our mission is to improving food safety, by building tools to help with handwashing controls.
Q: Why did you apply for this funding and how will you use it?
A: We applied for the FoodTech Next funding program to help us bring our product to an early commercialization stage. Going through all the product development phases is expensive, and the funding will help us bridge the gaps. The funding will primarily be used to build out our development and engineering teams that are responsible for the software and physical components of our system.
Q: What excites you most about working in this area of the food industry?
A: We believe we can have a significant and lasting impact on food safety by being the first company to digitize handwashing in the food industry!
Q: Why is collaboration so important for accelerating innovation in the food industry? Is it difficult to find good collaborating partners, and what would make the process easier?
A: It’s all well and good to invent something that works in a lab, but in order to bring that invention into use, it needs collaboration partners to test, to evaluate, and to help refine. Tools such as YODL and industry networking events are very helpful in making the connections that lead to collaborations. In this spirit, I’d love to talk to anyone reading this about collaboration, so please reach out!
Q: Please comment on the importance of public funding to help companies clear innovation hurdles and access leveraged funds.
A: All innovation is very expensive. As a start up, many times we end up in chicken-before-the-egg conversations with prospective investors, i.e. “Can’t fund until you have customers.” But it’s difficult to get customers without having the product developed to a point that can be shown to prospective customers. I have heard this called the “innovation gap” and we have certainly experienced it. Public funding has and will continue to help us bridge this gap in commercializing our innovation.
Q: Looking ahead, what’s on the horizon for your company?
A: We are working hard to bring our systems into public use in 2023. We’ve got a lot planned, and lots of ways and ideas that will be added to our system for the food and other industries! We are also excited to be bringing the system for more industry feedback to the Restaurants Canada Show.
Q: What are your passions or hobbies outside of work?
A: Running, camping, travelling, landscaping and tinkering with new technologies.