Eco Detection receives $10 million strategic investment from LSE-listed mining services company
Eco Detection, which makes “lab-in-a-box” solutions for automated water quality monitoring, has announced an investment worth $10 million from London Stock Exchange-listed mining services company Capital Limited.
In a statement on Friday, the Melbourne-based company said that its Ion-Q platform is currently gaining acceptance over a variety of water monitoring applications. Within mining it supports exploration and mining activities “by providing critical data for compliance and remediation reporting”.
Capital’s subsidiary MSALABS runs an international network of geochemical laboratory services.
“This investment will accelerate production expansion and sales into new markets for us,” said Jefferson Harcourt, CEO of Eco Detection.
“The issues around water are global, and not going away. Automation of a slow and expensive manual process makes sense, but it’s not easy to put a laboratory in the field. We’ve done it, and now we’re embracing the race to scale. Capital will play a critical role for us here.”
Eco Detection is part of Grey Innovation Group, which Harcourt is founder and Chairman of.
It was founded in 2018, and its technology has similarities with electrophoresis methods used by sister company GreyScan, which makes explosives detection equipment.
Eco Detection was a Top 10 Gold Award winner at this title’s Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers campaign last year for its second-generation Ion-Q+ product.
(An @AuManufacturing Conversations podcast with the company’s Lachlan McLaren and Dr Phi Fox is available here.)
Its recent progress includes a project led by Think Water Darwin, using Ion-Q+ in a drinking water monitoring and filtration system for remote communities and backed by a $485,223 Northern Territory Advanced Manufacturing Ecosystem Fund grant.
As well as mining and drinking water, Eco Detection is deploying its technology in municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants, agribusiness and aquaculture sectors.
Peter Stokes, Capital CEO added: “Capital consistently monitors technology that could add significant value to the mining industry, and we certainly see that potential here.”
Picture: supplied
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