What is Blue Sky Analytical Labs and its objective?
Blue Sky Analytical Labs is focused on providing local solutions with fast and reliable laboratory testing. We are licensed by Health Canada for cannabis testing but work with a variety of industries. Southern Alberta will continually benefit from a first-class analytical laboratory, dedicated to the needs of the municipalities and businesses that make up our region.
What are some major upcoming projects?
Growth is the name of the game for us right now. With our initial tests validated in-house we are now looking to onboard clients who need analytical services they can trust. We’re looking to expand our equipment to offer more services to clients and we collaborate heavily with the University of Lethbridge to develop the most versatile and accurate tests. We are also working with GoodCap Pharmaceuticals Inc. on a R&D project in the psychedelic mushroom space, but we can’t share any details yet!
What events is the company participating in?
We’re finalists for two of the categories at the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce Business Awards 2022 (Innovation and Technology and Young Entrepreneur). We also just presented at Bio Alberta’s Guild on the Go and the STEM Fusion events at the University of Lethbridge. Stay tuned for our next presentations!
What major challenges or milestones has the company overcome?
One of the most important challenges we faced was one that most startups fail at, and that’s getting started. We saw the benefits of a southern Alberta analytics lab, but you can’t just start something like that with little resources. We used the opportunities available to us to broker a partnership with the University of Lethbridge, and that really gave us a good starting ground. Then came the task of getting our first customers. A lot of analytics go through very centralized testing facilities in Calgary or other larger cities. We had to show people the value of having more local testing, and we’ve found a lot of success. Our first customers reached out to us, they we’re dissatisfied with the current testing options on the market and were looking to make a change. In discussions with customers, we’ve learnt that they received results 5 days faster on average by using Blue Sky’s services. Since inception 98% of our orders had results delivered on or before the promised turnaround time.
A larger challenge was developing a custom method for a client who had an unusual product they were taking to market. They needed a way to reliably extract all the cannabinoids out for analytical testing and no other labs were willing to help. We developed and validated this method which lead to a fantastic working relationship.
Learn more at blueskyanalytics.ca
