Nellie Technologies - CDR Innovator Interview

‍What is Nellie Technologies?

Stephen Milburn - Nellie exists to design, develop and deploy environmental mitigation technologies. Our core technology is in the field of CDR, and we have developed a bio-engineered direct air and point source capture system that involves the growth of biogenic biomass at speed and at scale, and we turn that into biochar and biogenic aggregates to seal that carbon dioxide away for a very long period of time.

Origins

What was the inspiration that led to the creation of your carbon removal startup?

Stephen Milburn - I've been building businesses since I was 21, and for the last 15 years, I've been tied to a computer, creating industrial software systems.

I love our clients, and we've delivered some excellent work, but I wanted to return to my physical science roots and build a business that had a real impact on a critical challenge. That challenge is climate change.

Whilst the environmental need for our technologies has been clear for some time, the urgent commercial need only really became clear through those industrial connections with the software business.

So, I suppose we have a little software company to thank for the birth of Nellie.

The "aha" Moment

Can you share that 'aha' breakthrough in your startup's journey that left you especially excited about its potential?

Stephen Milburn - Our tech is based on creating biomass at speed and at scale in our proprietary photobioreactors (basically, a big set of tubes used to grow microalgae that absorb carbon dioxide as they grow).

And, full disclosure, my design for the photobioreactors we're using now was done over ten years ago in an effort to make biofuels to reduce the fuel bills of a logistics company I owned at the time (I've always been a garage tinkerer).

It's common knowledge that microalgae biofuels are not really commercially viable, so the 'aha' moment came years ago when I realised we could use it for something else instead.

The aha moment to prototype was done really quickly, thanks both to a large amount of commercial interest and considerable help from our government here in Wales.

Garnering Attention

What have you found the best way of garnering investor or buyer attention?

Stephen Milburn - Kick the tyres! We have a few USPs which set us apart in the market of carbon dioxide removal; we're modular, scalable, geographically agnostic and very competitive on price. 

However, the real interest comes when we can demo and explain the technology in simple terms to stakeholders.

We invite them to come and kick the tyres of our kit. You can see what we're doing (you can smell it, too), and that's the key to bringing people with you. We can prove that it works.

Scalability and Strategy

How are you approaching scalability, and what tools or strategies have proven most effective in levelling up your solution?

Stephen Milburn - I think we're quite unique in the space in that we're equally focused on the science and the commercialisation strategy.

Nellie has been designed with several possible use cases in mind for the buyer of our technology.

What I mean by that is we've built a system and a business that's modular and scalable, and this allows us to put our kit almost anywhere and, as a result, be flexible with our price points.

By doing this, we can leverage affordable, brownfield and industrial estates and have minimal environmental impact on fresh water and land use.

Importantly, we've built a supply chain that is both flexible and adaptable, meaning our time to deploy is really quick and the capex relatively cheap.

Challenges

What's the biggest challenge your business is facing, and what do you think is required to solve it?

Stephen Milburn - Market knowledge and trust. It's a new market with a really broad range of buyers, and each buyer profile has a different expectation and a different approach to buying from us.

That means we need to be fully transparent in what we do and why we do it. The disclosure requirements are rightly huge - and we're happy to talk at length about what we do and why we do it.

The nascency of this market does mean that we need to build trust both in the technologies we're building and in the market as a whole.

There are loads of intermediary actors in the space - more than the tech providers, I think. They're there to both introduce and educate buyers as well as add that layer of trust. The issue is there are so many of them right now that both buyers and suppliers can struggle to differentiate.

It's time-consuming and costly to navigate this. Still, we are starting to see consolidation in this middle market, and this standardised approach to certification and reporting looks like a good thing.