cy health success story

Over the past two years, businesses have been met with both obstacles and opportunities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. To grow and thrive in this newly challenged landscape of commercialization, pivots have become more necessary than ever for companies who want to continue evolving.

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Carmina de Young, from London, Ontario, is one of these companies.

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Carmina de Young has been designing and producing garments since 2015. In 2020, they retooled and pivoted into producing medical isolation gowns for Canada, and CY Health was born. That same year, CY Health and partners launched the LifeCycle PPE initiative.   

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CY Health and their LifeCycle PPE partners have a vision to create a circular economy of PPE products in Canada that will both strengthen their local economy with job creation and support domestic production of essential PPE.

The alignment of CY Health’s vision and BIC’s focus on enabling Canada to become globally recognized leaders in sustainable chemistry, with an emphasis on the circular economy, made the opportunity for BIC to support and invest in CY Health a natural next step.

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“BIC is excited to be partnering with Carmena de Young to support the creation of a Canadian circular value chain for the production of medical PPE,” stated BIC Executive Director, Sandy Marshall.

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BIC is excited to announce an investment that will assist with CY Health’s growth, resulting in the diversion of PPE waste from hospitals to be recycled back into the hospital ecosystem through sustainably repurposed and produced PPE products.

“The investment will provide needed financing of the installation phase of Canada’s first spunbond nonwoven textile line that will create quality textile used in the production of Canadian-made PPE,” says company founder, Carmina de Young.

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In 2021, CY Health diverted over 66,000 pounds of scrap from the landfill and produced over 140,000 isolation gowns for Canada. This quarter, CY Health is producing 200,000 medical isolation gowns for a government sub-contract while developing new PPE products and expanding its distribution channels.

The goal of creating Canada’s first sustainable supply chain for PPE involves:

• recycling by partner company, LifeCycle Revive

• medical textile production by LifeCycle Health, majority-owned by Carmina de Young

• PPE manufacturing by CY Health, Carmina de Young’s PPE product line

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In addition to the support by SCA, CY Health has been supported by Next Generation Manufacturing (NGen), Bio-industrial Innovation Canada (BIC) and National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP). Founding LifeCycle companies include VIS Medical, Nadco International and Simcoe Plastics. 

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For more information please contact:

A.J. (Sandy) Marshall
Executive Director
Bioindustrial Innovation Canada
Email: sandym@bincanada.ca
Tel: 1.519.402.3441

 

Or

 

Meg Jackson
Marketing and Communications Manager

Bioindustrial Innovation Canada

Email:mjackson@bincanada.ca

Tel: 1.226.778.0020 ext. 249

 

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About Bioindustrial Innovation Canada (BIC):

Creating jobs and economic value sustainably for Canada is the vision driven by Bioindustrial Innovation Canada (BIC).

BIC is a not-for-profit business accelerator for sustainable chemistry, who has created a successful foundation to support an emerging hybrid chemistry cluster in Sarnia-Lambton, Ontario. BIC recognizes that the expansion and development of the bioeconomy in Sarnia-Lambton can grow alongside the petrochemical industry.

BIC further focuses on critical strategic capital investment in SME’s with compelling business plans where innovation in science and engineering can bring about major advances in sustainable chemistry. Sustainable chemistry is playing an important role in the development of solutions to the impacts of climate change, peak oil, energy security, the need for safe water, and the use of scarce natural resources. The increasing global demand for green and safer products offers the opportunity to create thousands of new jobs for Canadians.

BIC’s proven approach for clean, green and sustainable chemistry-based companies offers an ideal platform for the investment necessary to advance hybrid chemistry value chains, providing not only regional economic development and job benefits, but access to global markets.