Season 2 | Episode 5
Transcript
This episode follows FreshR founder Mina Mekhail as he traces his journey from immigrating to Halifax and pursuing a PhD in biomaterials to building a deep‑tech startup fighting global food waste through seafood packaging innovation. He explains how early life lessons about food scarcity in Egypt and a passion for reducing waste pushed him out of academia and into entrepreneurship, first with a poorly named company, Impactful Health R&D, and eventually with the rebranded FreshR.
Through candid stories of incubator programs, mentors, and customer discovery, Mina walks listeners through multiple pivots- from spraying coatings on produce to a breakthrough antimicrobial coating chemically bonded to packaging film that extends the shelf life of fresh proteins without touching the food. He opens up about bootstrapping in a tiny Montreal lab, relocating to Halifax during COVID, raising capital, scaling a 15‑person team, and learning to lead through technical challenges, regulatory hurdles, and constant risk, all while staying anchored to a single mission: innovating toward a zero‑food‑waste future.
Dr. Mina Mekhail
Founder and CEO of Freshr Technologies
Mina Mekhail is the founder and CEO of Freshr Technologies, bringing nearly 20 years of experience in biomaterial innovation and commercialization. A bioengineer by training, he completed his PhD from McGill University in 2014 and has since authored 15 peer-reviewed publications, secured multiple patents, and received 37 awards, including the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 (Atlantic).
Throughout his career, Dr. Mekhail has raised over $10M in public and private funding and built partnerships with leading food and packaging companies in Canada and abroad. Dr. Mekhail combines deep scientific expertise with a practical understanding of how innovation can scale. His leadership continues to guide Freshr’s effort to enhance FreshrPack®, a next-generation active packaging technology that helps fresh food last longer and waste less.
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