As the new year approaches, it feels an opportune time for us to pause and reflect on the past months while we look ahead to what the future may bring. At the start of this year WASE was a completely different business to the beast it’s grown into over the past months, so reflecting and recapping on our long journey only feels right as we gear up for an even bigger 2025.
Where was WASE at the start of the year?
In January, as we began the year, the WASE team was made up of 8 full-time staff members. Now, as we finish out the year, we are a close-knit team of 26. Building a team that embodies our core values of Sustainability, Trust, Innovation, Action, and Growth is vital to achieving the bright future we hope for at WASE. Seeing this growth level with-in our highly dedicated team is amazing and paints a bright future for the next year.
“At the start of the year, we were in Bristol at Science Creates
and just closing out a £8.5 million funding round. We were gearing up for a big
year of growth, starting with our small team of 8 primarily focused on R&D.
We have now grown into a team of 26 bringing with it a new capacity for project
delivery, manufacturing and operations. We were at an interesting stage of the start-up
journey, having a game-changing technology, early customer traction, and initial
pilot trials. We aimed to get a commercial unit manufactured, installed, and operating
by the end of the year. This is a huge milestone for a cleantech hardware
start-up with lots of opportunities to learn. Moving towards actual physical
sites and commercial roll-out is where we create impact. This is the kind of
stuff that will change the world” – Dr Thomas Fudge, CEO
This year marked a big change at WASE as we left the science creates site and moved around the corner into our new offices. In our new location, we have a designated assembly area for building our reactors; we have also created a new custom lab area for our science team to continue developing and researching our systems. With the massive growth of our team has seen this year, upsizing into a bigger space has been vital to allow for collaboration, manufacturing and developing our cutting-edge research.
One of the most exciting things WASE has achieved this year was developing and installing multiple projects. We saw many projects worked through various stages of development but most exciting of all was seeing modules installed on-site. This year we saw our reactor go live at Llefrith Henfaes Dairy Farm treating 6.3 m3/day of their slurry waste. They were previously discharging their slurry by-products to slurry pits but through the implementation of our WASE system they are extracting energy value from their cow slurry. This project will bring with it significant carbon reduction due to decreased methane emissions from the slurry pits alongside the renewable energy produced from the system. The system is generating 10.6 m3/hr of methane and 324MWh of renewable electricity which is capable of powering the farm all year round. Find out more about the project here. The success of this project has been great to see and we can’t wait to help more of those in the industry down the line.
What was the biggest achievement for WASE over the last year?
“I feel that growing our team was our biggest achievement. With
the increased capacity and expertise, we have been able to build and install the first commercial electro-methanogenic reactor, which has been going through
8 years of R&D. Finally having a product, we can touch after all that time
is really exciting!” – Dr Thomas Fudge, CEO
When we look back over the year it has also been great to see WASE’s technology recognised through so many prestigious awards. Although we may not have won every award we were nominated for its feels amazing to know our work is being seen. To even be nominated against so many worthy competitors in these award categories is truly an honour. Some notable awards we received were Best go-to-market strategy at Blue Tech Forum, the Innovation category at Tech South West awards and we were named as a WIRED Trailblazer for 2024.
This year we were also lucky enough to start a knowledge transfer partnership with the University of West of England funded by Innovate UK. This partnership will hopefully allow us to drive innovation and commercial impact through collaboration with the University. The focus of this partnership will be on developing a machine learning-based soft sensing platform to be integrated within our Electro-Methanogenesis Reactor and help to improve the EMR technology.
An big part of what we do at WASE is creating important connections with like-minded people who share our vision for a more sustainable future. To achieve this, we attended a variety of events across the year showcasing our innovative technology and fostering lasting partnerships. Over the year we attended more than 14 events and got to talk about the work we do here at WASE with so many wonderful people. These events took us to 8 cities across the globe and across 4 continents – North America, South America, Europe and Asia. Some of the great events we attended were the Global Water Summit, Blue Tech Forum, Future Food Tech, Brewers Congress, WEFTEC and Climate First’s Japan trade show. We can only hope for another exciting, event packed year in 2025.
Another exciting event WASE was represented at this year was the first Latin American meeting of the International Society for Microbial Electrochemistry and Technology (LA-ISMET). It saw our own Harvey Rutland (AI process engineer) and Kyle Bowman (bio-electrochemical engineer) travel to Brazil to showcase developments in ‘real-time monitoring and control of Microbial Electrolysis Cell Assisted Anaerobic Digestion (MEC-AD) systems using biosensor technology with simulated brewery wastewater’ which they have been working on as part of their PhD’s at the University of Bristol and the University of Westminster. It’s great to see those developing the amazing science behind our systems get to share it with those all over the globe.
As we look forward to 2025 the future is looking exciting (and busy) for us here at WASE as we already have a few events on the agenda. In the new year we will be attending Future Food Tech in San Francisco and Drinktec in Munich. If you are also attending these events do reach out to the team (here), we would love to see you there. With so much on the cards for the coming year we asked Dr Fudge for his vision of what he sees for the coming year.
What would you like to see WASE achieve in the next year?
“I feel that we have a very exciting year to come. This past year has really been about growth and developing strong roots and structure for WASE. The next year will be about continuing to develop and hone our product while building on our growth. We want to have more units on the ground, to learn from the mistakes we made this year and close our a larger investment round that will help us to accelerate our global expansion.” – Dr Thomas Fudge, CEO
As the year comes to a close, we would like to say a big thank you from all the WASE team to everyone we had the pleasure of meeting along the way. We look forward to sharing more of the WASE story as we continue to unlock the power of waste and strive for a more sustainable future.
-The WASE team
