Prince George, B.C. – UNBC researcher Dr. Hossein Kazemian and his team have reached a pivotal milestone with industry partner Brown’s Bay Packing Company Ltd. in their collaborative efforts to lead the way on sustainable solutions for the seafood packaging sector. 

A $300,000 Innovate BC Ignite Award will fund the crucial next step in transforming a lab-proven, eco-friendly thermal packaging prototype into a commercially viable product. The initiative is expected to create 12 new full-time jobs and sustain existing positions in rural communities, while delivering an alternative to packaging made from petroleum-based plastics and polystyrene foam.

Kazemian and his team at UNBC’s Northern Analytical Lab Services (NALS) have been working with Vancouver Island-based Brown’s Bay Packing to address the environmental and regulatory challenges of traditional packaging. The Ignite Award is the second received for this project and will support the transition from innovation to market-ready product, as the researchers refine their formulations, conduct pilot-scale production runs and test product performance at industrial scale. 

“We’ve been working closely with Brown’s Bay Packing in Campbell River to develop a fully compostable, biodegradable biopolymer packaging for more than four years. Over the course of our research, we identified a quicker path to address the immediate polystyrene foam problem through a recyclable hybrid solution,” says Kazemian, Director of NALS and Northern BC’s Environment and Climate Solutions Hub at UNBC. “This Ignite Award helps accelerate the research and development tracks for what we’re calling Thermoloc – both the hybrid solution and the longer-term, fully compostable solution.”

The packaging innovations have significant global potential to transform key industries with high cold-chain logistic needs such as seafood, meal kits and pharmaceuticals. 

The Ignite Award complements recent funding Brown’s Bay received from the provincial government’s CleanBC Plastics Action Fund to support commercialization efforts and the BC Manufacturing Jobs Fund to acquire new machinery and retrofit one of its facilities in Campbell River to manufacture the sustainable seafood packaging.

“Together, these investments will enable our Seawise Innovative Packaging brand to build out the infrastructure and talent needed to bring Thermoloc to market and meet the growing demand for cleaner packaging solutions,” says Brown’s Bay Packing Company Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Jesse Knight. “Our collaboration with UNBC is about more than innovation, it’s about creating economic opportunities in north Island communities and helping to build a more sustainable future.”

Knight anticipates hiring at least 12 new full-time positions - from engineers, technicians and logistics personnel to sales and marketing support staff - as Seawise implements new production lines and scales up packaging manufacturing over the next couple of years.

“This partnership shows how university research can drive real-world solutions that benefit both our environment and the economy,” says UNBC Vice-President Research and Innovation Dr. Paula Wood-Adams. “Transforming leading-edge science into sustainable jobs—especially in rural and remote communities—is exactly the impact we aim to achieve.”

To date, this research project has received almost $1.2 million from industry funding contributions, with additional in-kind contributions and support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Alliance and the Mitacs Accelerate program. 

The funding supports two graduate students and two postdoctoral researchers at UNBC, providing valuable hands-on experience in biopolymer formulation and advanced packaging technology development.

“This project reflects the power of university-industry collaboration in creating tangible solutions to an urgent environmental challenge,” says Kazemian. “By mobilizing our biopolymer research into a viable commercial product, we are reducing waste and lowering carbon footprints while creating new, high-quality jobs in rural communities. It’s incredibly exciting to see this partnership become a catalyst for positive change in British Columbia and beyond – we're advancing B.C.’s leadership in clean technology and paving the way for a circular economy,”