Smart Skin’s nanotechnology helping brewers save millions

By Quentin Casey for The National Post | link to original article

“Walk into any of the world’s big breweries and you’ll likely see thousands of bottles shuttling along a series of mechanized pathways. The bottles, looking like a battalion of small soldiers, clang into one another as they flow though the various stations: cleaning, filling, capping, packing. It’s a route of multiple twists and turns, meaning there’s plenty of opportunity for a bottle to crack, leaving beer and glass on the production floor, not to mention a tiny dent in the company’s bottom line. The loss of a bottle or can on a production line — if regularly repeated — can add up to millions of dollars for a major brewer.

Now, Fredericton, N.B.-based Smart Skin Technologies product is being used by six of the top 10 beer brands in the world to help slash those costs, said Kumaran Thillainadarajah, the company’s founder and chief executive. And comparisons are being drawn to two other Fredericton-founded tech companies: Radian6 and Q1 Labs, both of which were recently bought by big Silicon Valley players.” Read full article…