Will the Dragons rave about her all-natural glowsticks?
Paige Whitehead from the Comox Valley is hoping so. Her pitch on the Dragons Den TV show airs tonight, featuring her company’s invention, glowsticks that create light using a natural enzyme similar to what’s found in algae that create bioluminescent displays in coastal waters at night.
Whitehead says there are potential applications for her company’s technology on a global, commercial scale.
“I talked to one fishing company that bought eight million glowsticks last year for their fishing operations,” she says. “That’s our goal as a company, is to one day replace the biggest use of these glowsticks, for emergency lighting, for search and rescue and signalling, for commercial fishing, but getting there and getting to the scale we need to be at to actually work with these customers, it’s a long road and this is one of our many, many steps towards that.”
Her company, LuxBio, makes non-toxic glowsticks that produce bright light for six hours, and glow for up to 24 hours. They are also compostable. She is working with the Canadian Coast Guard on a glowing dye that could help with nighttime searches. She’s also worked with NASA, the oil and gas industry, and others interested in the applications for the glowing enzyme.
Now they’re looking to scale up production, to meet growing demand. There’s a Kickstarter fundraiser currently running, visit LuxBio’s website for the link.
Her pitch airs tonight on CBC and CBC Gem.
— With files from Hussam El-Ghussein
