C-Therm's Path From a Team of Two in 2007 to Customers Worldwide

A new episode of The Entrepreneurs, released on Oct. 14, tells how C-Therm Technologies went from a team of two in 2007 to a Fredericton company selling thermal conductivity instruments worldwide. The guide is CEO Adam Harris, who has led the company since its start-up phase.

C-Therm makes instruments that measure thermal conductivity, how well a material moves heat. That one property matters in laptops and EV batteries, aerospace composites, textiles, polymers and building insulation. As Harris puts it in the episode, it comes up as "a really critical performance attribute" across many industries.

Born at UNB

The technology began at the University of New Brunswick, where Dr. Nancy Mathis developed a non-destructive way to measure thermal conductivity while working on her PhD in chemical engineering in the 1990s. Her company, Mathis Instruments, became a commercial enterprise in 1995 and earned national recognition, including the Ernest C. Manning Foundation's Principal Award for Innovation in 2003. Harris started there as an analyst while he was a UNB student. His role grew into sales and then some product management.

Mathis was, in the episode's own summary, "pegged to be a billion-dollar company" when it came out of the UNB lab. It was venture-capital backed and, as Harris puts it, chasing "a hockey stick growth curve." Around the time it launched its TCi analyzer, the company "hit the wall" and went through bankruptcy. Harris lost his job. "You learn a lot about bankruptcy and secured creditors and the pecking order," he says, and the lesson that stuck was to make tough calls on spending before things go too far.

A fresh start as a team of two

In 2007, Halifax entrepreneur Charles "Chuck" Cartmill, founder of LED Roadway Lighting, bought the Mathis IP and assets and launched C-Therm. He hired Harris and one other team member, Nicole, to relaunch it. "We restarted as a dynamic team of two," Harris says in the episode. The company turns 20 next year.

This time there was no venture capital. "We've been private since 2007. We haven't done any equity raises," Harris says. C-Therm stayed lean for years, contracting out engineering rather than keeping a full team, and grew on sales and, the episode notes, grants and tax incentives. Harris credits Cartmill as a mentor who "instilled those operating conditions very early on." The business had to be profitable and cash-positive. "Every year we grew and we grew profitably," Harris says.

When Cartmill sold the company to Harris in January 2021, he said Harris had been "an outstanding business leader delivering profitability in every year of our operation." The release adds that the company had created more than 25 high-tech jobs in the region, and Harris said the business had doubled in size over the previous three years. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. At the time, Entrevestor reported that about 95 per cent of C-Therm's sales were exports.

Built with customers in the room

The TCi analyzer, first released in April 2006 in the Mathis days, was originally developed with a consortium of industry users, including the U.S. Navy and Kodak, the episode says. Harris says getting a group of clients to agree on common requirements was "really pivotal" to building something that met a real need. C-Therm's team developed the TCi into Trident, now its flagship platform, which combines three thermal conductivity methods in one instrument.

"The customer is the most important perspective," Harris says, and you want them "largely in the room."

Being close to customers also showed him how far the market reached. Distribution partners "from Japan, from France, from all over the world" reached out, Harris says, with customers who needed the product. For labs that don't need a system in-house, C-Therm runs Thermal Analysis Labs, a contract testing service. It measures thermal conductivity and adjacent properties such as heat capacity and thermal expansion, and Harris says it has grown fast over the last five years.

Made in New Brunswick

Trident's success brought scaling problems in manufacturing and calibration. C-Therm's answer was to partner with a local electronics manufacturer that does aerospace and defence work under an ISO quality system, "keeping it proudly in New Brunswick," Harris says, while its own team focuses on technology, application development and sales. Its engineering team now spans electrical, software and mechanical design, alongside the application scientists Harris calls one of the company's most important assets. The company held a grand opening for its new downtown Fredericton headquarters in July 2018 and won the ONB Exporter of the Year award in May 2022, according to its milestones page.

For Harris, the purpose goes beyond the business: creating economic activity at home and meaningful work for UNB engineering graduates. By numbers the company ran at the start of this year, he says, C-Therm has created close to $70 million in economic activity in the province since 2007. Connie Woodside, president of Junior Achievement in Fredericton, says in the episode that Harris is "always involved" with the organization and meets students to share what he has learned.

Watch the full episode above, and see our recent coverage of C-Therm's Automated Thermal Control launch and its thermal interface materials webinar.

Sources

• How Adam Harris built C-Therm — The Entrepreneurs, episode 014 page (Oct. 14, 2026): billion-dollar expectations, investor money, the crash and Harris's job loss, the Halifax entrepreneur's rebuild, slow growth and listening to customers
• How Adam Harris built C-Therm — The Entrepreneurs (YouTube, Oct. 14, 2026): Mathis's 1995 start and bankruptcy; Harris as UNB student analyst, then sales and product management; Cartmill's purchase and the team of two; no equity raises since 2007; the TCi consortium (U.S. Navy, Kodak) and Trident; distribution partners; Thermal Analysis Labs; local manufacturing partner; UNB graduates; Junior Achievement (Connie Woodside); the ~$70 million estimate
• About Us and milestones — C-Therm: UNB origin; 2003 Manning Principal Award; April 2006 TCi release; June 2007 asset purchase and new company; July 2018 facility opening; May 2022 ONB Exporter of the Year
• Our Leadership Team — C-Therm: Adam Harris, CEO
• Canadian Business Leader Sells C-Therm to Top Exec — C-Therm (2021): Charles Cartmill; January 2021 sale to Harris; profitability every year; 25+ jobs; business doubled in three years
• Cartmill Sells C-Therm to Harris — Entrevestor: Cartmill as Halifax-based LED Roadway Lighting founder; Mathis asset purchase; Harris led C-Therm since its 2007 inception; ~95 per cent export sales; downtown Fredericton headquarters; Trident's three methods
• C-Therm Launches Automated Thermal Control for Its Trident Platform — NB Tech News