East Coast Innovation Raises $550K+ as SmoothMove Goes Commercial with Mowi

St. Andrews just put another hard-tech cheque into the Bay of Fundy’s signature industry.

East Coast Innovation has raised more than $550,000 so far in its first institutional round, Entrevestor reported, with the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation leading at $350,000 and TLT Ventures putting in $200,000. Existing shareholders are also in; the round is still open. The money is aimed at commercialization, business development, and ops as the company pushes its SmoothMove fish-loading system further into global salmon farming.

What SmoothMove does

Traditional transfers pull salmon into pumping systems through a funnel on a suction hose — low visibility, little rate control, and a lot of crowding stress. East Coast Innovation’s patent-pending SmoothMove (the company markets a Smart Funnel) is built to calm that interface: operators get better visibility above and below the water, fish load at lower densities and steadier rates, and welfare and operational risk drop together. The company has been developing the system since 2020.

Commercial proof on a Mowi harvest vessel

The financing lands after a real customer milestone. Following pilots, East Coast Innovation signed its first commercial agreement for SmoothMove aboard the Norwegian harvest vessel Tauranga, owned by Napier AS and working harvest ops for global salmon leader Mowi, per NBIF’s release. Entrevestor relayed the company’s claim that a SmoothMove 400 has run continuously since January 28, 2026 with no operational downtime, loading more than 4 million kilograms of salmon in a single month.

Napier COO Kåre Andreas Cederström told Entrevestor fish stayed calm through testing and that early health data looked positive, with further welfare testing still underway.

Why it matters here

New Brunswick’s aquaculture corridor — St. Andrews / St. George and the Fundy shore — is usually told as a farming story. This deal is the tech export cut of the same geography: a local equipment company selling welfare-and-throughput hardware into a US$21.4-billion global salmon market, with NBIF and TLT writing the first institutional cheques after the product is already working for Mowi’s harvest partner. The next test is ordinary and hard: more vessels, more producers, and a closed round that matches the commercial traction already on the water.

Sources

• East Coast Innovation Raises $550K+ — Entrevestor (Jul 9, 2026) — round totals, NBIF $350K / TLT $200K, open round, Tauranga ops since Jan 28, 4M kg/month claim, Napier COO quote
• New Brunswick Aquaculture Technology Gains Commercial Traction with World's Largest Salmon Producer — NBIF (Jul 8, 2026) — lead investment framing, SmoothMove description, Mowi / Napier / Tauranga commercial agreement, Jeff White and Joel Halse quotes
• East Coast Innovation — company site, St. Andrews base, fabrication footprint
• SmoothMove Smart Funnel — East Coast Innovation — product positioning and transfer-system claims
• TLT Ventures — investor