Catalyst technology company, Econic Technologies, has appointed Keith Wiggins as its new CEO to lead the next stage scale up and commercialisation of the business.

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The leader in CO₂ utilisation technology, Econic Technologies, has today announced the appointment of Keith Wiggins as its new CEO. Wiggins will take over from Dr Rowena Sellens who will retire after eight years of leadership, having taken the company to its market-leading position from a spin-out start up. The firm is now ready to scale the commercialisation of its unique catalyst technology amongst customers looking to achieve net zero carbon and core sustainability objectives.

The key next stages in this process are to progress key partnerships alongside a forthcoming fund raise on the back of recently secured investment from existing shareholders and the UK government’s Future Fund.

Wiggins brings broad experience of successfully running advanced manufacturing businesses and commercialising technologies across global markets. His international career spans senior leadership positions with leading multinationals and early stage companies.

Keith Wiggins, CEO of Econic Technologies, commented: ‘It is an honour to be joining Econic Technologies at a time when the business is poised to scale and commercialize. Rowena and the team have developed a world class technology that brings environmental, cost and performance benefits to customers, at a time when the world is demanding sustainable solutions for CO₂. I look forward to being part of the growth story ahead.’

Wiggins replaces the retiring Dr Rowena Sellens, who was appointed in 2014 and oversaw Econic Technologies’ initial funding rounds; the launch of a UK-first customer demonstration facility; and the conclusion of the firm’s first joint development agreements, including a partnership with Drax. Dr Sellens will use her retirement to explore a number of non-executive roles.

Dr Rowena Sellens, former CEO, commented: ‘Overseeing the growth of Econic Technologies has been a real labour of love. Thanks to the incredible hard work of a team that I was so proud to lead, the business has gone from strength to strength. I am very happy to be passing the reins to Keith, who brings fresh perspectives and deep experience that will help the catalyst complete the final stages of commercialisation. I wish him well, and look forward to watching the firm’s continued growth.’

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For more information contact:

Mr Leigh S Taylor, Head of Sales & Licensing
+44 (0)1625 238 645 | l.taylor@econic-technologies.com

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Get in touch to find out how we can help turn waste CO₂ into added value for your business.

Author, Econic

9th November 2020

Climate impact catalyst technology company, Econic Technologies, announces that it has raised £3.2 million pounds funding via a convertible loan. The loan includes a £1.6 million investment from the UK government’s Future Fund, which was established to support innovative businesses through the COVID-19 outbreak, matched by funds from existing investors OGCI Climate Investments and IP Group plc.

The funding will be used to drive forward the commercialisation of Econic’s pioneering catalyst technologies, which enable manufacturers to harness the value of waste CO2 recycling it directly into existing processes to displace traditional oil-based chemicals. The unique technology is energy efficient and reduces cost at the same time as delivering clear climate change impact by both using captured CO2 and reducing future emissions through decreasing use of fossil-based chemicals. The technology has moved from laboratory to industrial pilot scale in the past two years with extensive process and product validation. Econic is now moving to deploy the technology at commercial scale in the first target market, polyols for polyurethane, in collaboration with material producers and downstream users looking to harness the product benefits and positive climate impact. At the same time, the Econic technology platform aligns directly with other key application markets such as surfactants where the drive for more sustainable products is creating new opportunities and partnerships.

Rowena Sellens, CEO of Econic Technologies, commented:

 “This additional support will help Econic accelerate customer adoption of what is an economically attractive route to more sustainable products, reducing the climate impact of materials that we all use in our everyday lives. We will be working closely with existing and new commercial partners to make that happen.”

Just Jansz, Chairman of Econic Technologies, added:

“I would like to thank Econic’s shareholders for their continued support, as well as the Future Fund, in these extraordinary times. Impressive progress in the past year has positioned the Company well for a number of exciting partnership discussions aimed at progressing commercialisation in polyols for polyurethanes and accelerating deployment of the technology into other markets such as surfactants.”

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About the Future Fund

The Future Fund will support the UK’s innovative businesses currently affected by Covid-19. These businesses have been unable to access other government business support programmes, such as CBILS, because they are either pre-revenue or pre-profit and typically rely on equity investment. Initially, £250 million was made available by the government for investment through the scheme, to be matched by private investors, with the Treasury making clear the amount could be increased if needed. Due to the popularity of the Fund, more funding is being made available. Developed by the government and delivered by the British Business Bank, the Future Fund launched for applications in May and will initially be open until the end of November.

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Get in touch to find out how we can help turn waste CO₂ into added value for your business.

Author, Anthea Blackburn

Econic Technologies awarded Innovate UK grant to support further development of its’ pioneering technology to help fight climate change.

Econic Technologies has been awarded an Innovate UK grant under the Sustainable Innovation Fund framework to support further development of its’ pioneering technology to help fight climate change by facilitating the use of waste CO₂ as a raw material, replacing expensive oil-based feedstocks, in polymer manufacture.  The grant, which supports a nine-month programme of innovation, was secured by the Econic team to allow greater resource focus on the process of recycling Econic’s innovative catalyst and will contribute to Econic’s R&D expenditure.

Dave Walker, Head of Process Development, Econic Technologies, commented:

“This is fantastic news for Econic.  This grant will allow us to support and accelerate our development, bringing enhanced performance to our already world leading technology package”.  

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For more information contact:

Mr Leigh S Taylor, Head of Sales & Licensing at Econic Technologies
+44 (0)1625 238 645 | l.taylor@econic-technologies.com

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Get in touch to find out how we can help turn waste CO₂ into added value for your business.

Author, Econic

As Econic grows significantly and moves towards commercialisation, so too do our scientific innovations. These technological developments form part of the foundation, and the future, of our company, so it’s important that we protect them, in the same way that you would your house or car. This is where Dr Michael Kember, our Head of Research and Intellectual Property, and also a co-founder of Econic, steps in.

Mike determines the direction that our research team take in the development of new generations of catalysts and CO₂-containing polymeric products, not only in terms of the fundamental scientific developments, but also in their protection as Econic’s intellectual property. This task requires Mike and the team to have a forensic understanding of the current IP landscape to see where and how Econic fits in, and the directions  future technology innovations can take. “It is important that we protect our catalyst technologies at all stages of development.” Mike states, “This protection is crucial in establishing the place of our unique catalyst systems’ foothold in the market. It also allows our customers the freedom to use these technologies in their own business processes, opening up the advantages of CO₂-based polyols and materials.”

Econic’s IP portfolio is an ever-evolving, growing collection, currently consisting of more than 30 granted patents that span from polymerisation catalysts and the processes used in our technology, to enhanced polyurethane products made using CO₂-containing polyols. This portfolio will only continue to diversify as we develop new generations of our catalyst technologies for use in the polyols for the polyurethane market, and, looking ahead, to wider plastics markets. The potential is far-reaching and we are only just scratching the surface.

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Get in touch to find out how we can help turn waste CO₂ into added value for your business.

Author, Anthea Blackburn

Safety is one of the founding values that underpins how Econic operates not only on a day-to-day basis in our laboratories and Customer Demonstration Facility, but also as we plan for the commercialisation of our catalyst technologies and further growth of the company. Dr Solène Cauët-Fidge, our Safety and Laboratory Manager, is leading the charge in implementing our Health and Safety policies throughout our very diverse activities across two sites.

Guaranteeing safety compliance in a growing company, whilst also ensuring that research can run with minimal disruptions, can be a challenge for Health and Safety. “Working with the research team who carry out a breadth of activities, as well as ever-developing processes and working conditions, keeps me on my toes” says Solène. “But, it’s the dynamic nature of Econic that makes it so exciting! My days can involve anything from managing the use of new chemicals on a laboratory scale, to developing the company’s H&S policy, to considering the safety implications of scaling a process to the demonstration scale or beyond.”

As we move closer to the commercialisation of our catalyst technologies, it is vital that we maintain the highest levels of safety practices as we not only develop and transfer internally our processes from the lab to plant scale, but also as we move to test these systems in our customers’ facilities. Safety processes are an integral element of helping our customers to realise the full potential of incorporating waste CO₂ into their polyol and downstream plastics applications.

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Get in touch to find out how we can help turn waste CO₂ into added value for your business.

Author, Anthea Blackburn

Industrial placements are invaluable – to both undergraduate students and companies. Students are offered the chance to use their theoretical knowledge in real world technical applications, as well as gain transferable skills in working in industry and, of course, being exposed to a plethora of new scientific concepts and skills. For companies, in particular SMEs like Econic, we have the opportunity to work with motivated students from a range of backgrounds who bring new skills and creative ideas to a growing technical team.

One of our current industrial placement students is Tom Lynch, who is spending the fourth year of his Chemical Engineering degree at Loughborough University as a member of our Process Development team. Guided by our process development experts, Tom has played an instrumental role in the development of our downstream polyol processing and the transfer of these processes from the lab to pilot scale, as well as the generation of valuable data to help our customers efficiently scale their use of our technologies. Tom has found working in Econic’s continually developing environment to be most rewarding: “The smaller team size means that I’ve had the opportunities for more responsibilities and opportunities than those of my classmates who work at much larger companies, especially since I have been able to work on projects in both the lab and at the Customer Demonstration Facility.”

As we move closer to the commercialisation of our catalyst technologies, the downstream process development and transfer of our systems from the lab to plant scales are a vital step in helping our customers to realise the full potential of incorporating waste CO₂ into their polyol and downstream plastics applications.

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Get in touch to find out how we can help turn waste CO₂ into added value for your business.

Author, Anthea Blackburn

It has been a year since we opened the doors to our customer demonstration facility in Runcorn – the very first of its kind in the UK – to demonstrate how our pioneering catalyst technology can create polyols using waste CO₂. It would be safe to say that, in this time, a fantastic buzz has sprung up around the plant, not just from our fellow members of The Heath, but from across the plastics industry.

So far, we’ve had visits from 60 leading global companies within the polyurethane industry, as well as Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham, the Metro Mayors of Manchester and Liverpool. The team of 7 at the facility has been busy producing polyol samples for all of the interested parties, who are testing the added value that our technology will incorporate into their own downstream polyurethane applications – everything from CO₂-based insulation foams, to coatings and elastomers.

Over the course of the year, activity at the plant has helped our pioneering catalyst technology move out of the lab and onto the factory floor, demonstrating the huge economic and positive potential of CO₂ for manufacturers.

Importantly for polyurethane producers, our facility uses a conventional reactor design and widely-available downstream technology, which shows just how readily existing plants can be retrofitted to use our catalyst. But unlike existing plants, our facility enables manufacturers to create CO₂-containing polyols at lower pressures and temperatures, which not only allows for much safer operation, but also leads to significant cost savings. Producing everyday goods from CO₂ may have once sounded like science fiction, but our facility has demonstrated that it is now science fact.

In the coming months, the facility will continue to fire on all cylinders. We look forward to welcoming more customers to the facility to further demonstrate the economic, environmental and product potential of our catalyst technology and how easily the use of waste CO₂ as a raw material can be adopted, and its advantages realised by the polyurethane industry.

Happy birthday, customer demonstration facility! Here’s to another fantastic year ahead.

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Get in touch to learn more about our Customer Demonstration Facility and to find out how we can help turn waste CO₂ into added value for your business.

Author, Anthea Blackburn

Gemma is one of our most recent additions to the Econic team, having studied at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford and completing her PhD studies in 2018. Her graduate research focussed on the development of catalysts for copolymerisation processes and studying their mechanistic pathways. Being able to apply her analytical skills and to draw on her experience in reaction kinetics is now proving invaluable to her development and she has quickly become a great addition to our Process Development team.

The transition from academic to industrial research has provided Gemma with an interesting challenge, but the rewards that accompany working in a fast-paced and innovative young company far outstrip the challenges. “Working for a pioneering company like Econic with a creative and motivated team has not only enabled me to apply my skills to address a critical global problem, but also to see tangible results and process improvements quickly. Using state of the art equipment allows me to optimise our cutting-edge catalyst technology’s conditions and develop the best process for our customers. Every day is different with a new challenge to tackle, as we develop our technology to reach its full potential.”

As interest grows in the benefits that our catalyst technologies and waste CO₂ can bring to the polyol industry, the Process Development team are instrumental to the optimisation of polyol synthesis and processing from laboratory to pilot scale. In addition to supporting our customers in the roll out of our catalyst technologies and processes, they are also key to the development of the next generations of processes that our catalyst technologies can enable at industrially relevant temperatures and pressures, as we realise the value and endless potential of waste CO₂.

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Get in touch to find out how we can help turn waste CO₂ into added value for your business.

Author, Anthea Blackburn

Econic Technologies, a British cleantech pioneer helping turn waste carbon dioxide into an asset for the plastics industry, was named in the prestigious 2019 Global Cleantech 100. The Global Cleantech 100 is an annual guide published by Cleantech Group to the leading companies and themes in sustainable innovation. It features the private, independent, for-profit companies best positioned to solve tomorrow’s clean technology challenges. This year marks the 10^th edition of the list.

“Econic’s technology allows plastics manufacturers to recycle their captured carbon dioxide into existing plants to make products at lower cost, with improved properties and more sustainably. Carbon dioxide is incorporated directly without the need for energy and resource intensive transformation, turning it from an expensive problem to a profit enhancing opportunity at the same time as reducing the reliance on oil as a raw material, thereby cutting harmful emissions in the industrial process.

“Adoption of this technology in the first market will see the equivalent of 4M cars worth of carbon dioxide emissions saved annually, and we are thrilled that the Global Cleantech 100 has recognised both Econic Technologies and the potential of carbon dioxide as a raw material. This is a further vote of confidence in the growing carbon capture utilisation sector”, said Dr Rowena Sellens, CEO of Econic Technologies.

The list combines Cleantech Group’s research data with qualitative judgements from nominations and insight from a global 87-member expert panel comprised of leading investors and experts from corporations and industrials active in technology and innovation scouting. From pioneers and veterans to new entrants, the expert panel broadly represents the global cleantech community and results in a list with a powerful base of respect and support from many important players within the cleantech innovation ecosystem. The list is sponsored by Chubb.

“Our tenth edition is dominated by innovations for the future of food and mobility, and a decentralized and digitized future not only for energy, but for the industrial world more generally,” said Richard Youngman, CEO, Cleantech Group. “This is a far cry from the dominance of hardware, solar and biofuels in the inaugural Global Cleantech 100 in 2009.”

The complete list of 100 companies was revealed on 28 January at the 17^th annual Cleantech Forum in San Francisco.

• For detailed information on Econic Technologies’ outlook as an innovator, visit Cleantech Group’s market intelligence platform i3 and search for Econic Technologies.

• Download the report and meet the companies solving our biggest challenges

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For further information, please contact:
Alex Kane, Farrer Kane: +44 (0) 20 7415 7154 | alex@farrerkane.com
Max Jewell, Farrer Kane: +44 (0) 20 7415 7154 | maxjewell@farrerkane.com

To find out how we can help turn waste CO₂ into added value for your business, please contact:
Richard French, Business Development Director Econic Technologies | +44 1625 238 644

Author, Anthea Blackburn

On 16 October 2018, around 80 leading industrial and research stakeholders from across Europe, including Econic CEO Dr Rowena Sellens, gathered in the Port of Antwerp, Belgium to attend the first CO₂ Value Day organised by CO₂ Value Europe, the European association dedicated to CO₂ utilisation. Also commonly called “Carbon Capture & Utilisation” (CCU), this topic covers all established and innovative industrial processes that transform CO₂ into a variety of valuable products such as synthetic fuels, chemicals or building materials.

The main purpose of the conference was not only to provide its current and aspiring members with an update on progress made since its foundation, but also to present a real-life CCU demonstration project currently being implemented in the Port of Antwerp. In the afternoon, attendees worked in specific small groups (dedicated to fuels, chemicals or building products), to define concrete actions to be implemented by the Association in coming months.

In her introduction speech, the Association’s President Stefanie Kesting reminded all participants that the mission of CO₂ Value Europe is to develop a new CCU industry sector which can recycle carbon at a large scale, by coordinating the efforts of all relevant stakeholders of the CO₂ value chain. “Today, I’m very happy” she said, “because we grew our membership in less than a year from just over 40 to more than 60. CCU has attracted a lot of attention as an emerging topic with a key role to play in the sustainable transition of our economy. Our association is now perceived as the official spokesperson and ambassador of the CCU community and we gained a strong legitimacy towards EU policy makers.” Outside of Europe, our visibility is also growing fast and we even received requests for membership from the US, Canada, Chile and Australia”.

CO₂ Value Europe’s Secretary General, Damien Dallemagne added: “What struck me is the strong demand for more  networking and matchmaking among the different stakeholders engaged in developing CCU. Our Association is unique in its capacity to facilitate connections between companies from different industry sectors and research players who have complementary resources and needs related to CO₂ conversion.”

You can read more about the day and see additional pictures here.

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CO₂ Value Europe is the industry-driven European Association which is committed to coordinate and represent the CO₂ Utilisation community in Europe and to build up an integrated vision and action plan to develop CO₂ Utilisation into a new industrial sector making a significant contribution to Europe’s low carbon economy. It is the only association in Europe entirely dedicated to the subject, gathering stake­holders from all the relevant sectors of the CO₂ value chain: CO₂ emitters from all sig­nificant process and energy intensive industries, providers of decarbonated energy, industrial gas experts, CO₂ conversion technology providers, and users of CO₂-based products.

If you would like to learn more about the Association or are interested in becoming a member, please see their website or get in contact with us at Econic.

Author, Anthea Blackburn