Earth drying firm close to making first profit
Jun 16 2009 by Iain Laing, The Journal
A COMPANY which uses electricity to dry out sludge and waste has made its first sales five years after it was launched at Newcastle University.
And Electrokinetic has just won £100,000 investment to further develop its technology as the Newcastle firm moves to also make its first profit this year.
The business was launched with the idea of using its pioneering electrokinetics geosynthetics technology, which can dry out soggy earth far more efficiently than purely physical methods, to make wet sports pitches ready to play on.
But after looking for more sustainable customers than in the volatile sports market it has sealed its first deals with water companies including Severn Trent and Thames Water and with transport companies including Network Rail.
Operations director John Lamont-Black said: “We are coming to the end of the first stage of the development work and are now winning contracts which will give us a few hundreds of thousands of pounds in sales and we are dangerously close to making our first profit.
“Our new customers are not recession-proof, as the troubles in the mining sector have shown, but companies like Network Rail and the big water companies are less likely to be affected.”
The £100,000 investment from Newcastle-based venture capitalist NEL Fund Manager, which is the third it has made in the company, will see the technology refined and fund more field trials to show the use of the technology by different industries.
The work with Network Rail follows trials which showed technology could help stabilise railway embankments and slopes by removing water from them, thus strengthening historically weak base materials and reducing the potential for movement and slippage. It has worked with water companies to dry and thus reduce the volume of sewage needing to be disposed.
The company, which has five staff, plans to explore the potential for sales to other UK companies before investigating the potential of overseas work next year.
Electrokinetic chief executive David Huntley says: “The trials that we are undertaking are proving the technology has real benefits for our customers, and we’re aiming to move as quickly as possible towards commercialisation in a number of different markets where we see huge opportunities.”
Nick Edgar, investment executive at NEL’s specialist venture capital arm NEL Capital, said: “EKG technology clearly has a huge scope for commercial application, and the Electrokinetic management team have demonstrated a clear, practical understanding of how they are going to go about realising its potential across several different market sectors.”
