Aspiring Materials: one of 13 chosen out of around 2,500 applicants

Christchurch startup Aspiring Materials, which is developing carbon sequestration technology, has been included in the third cohort of the Bill Gates-backed Breakthrough Energy initiative, gaining a significant non-dilutive grant in the process.

It’s the third time the Kiwi startup has applied to get into the two-year programme and is one of only 13 chosen worldwide, out of around 2,500 applicants this year. 

This month the company was also featured as part of the global XPRIZE carbon removal programme, sponsored by Elon Musk. 

Aspiring Materials co-founders Drs Cris Oze and Allan Scott have been named as Fellows under the Breakthrough Energy Fellows programme, working in the industrial carbon capture and storage sector. The programme provides innovators with resources including research funding, mentorship, education and access to its extensive network in order to get their ideas from lab to market with more speed.

Aspiring Materials CEO Mark Chadderton tells Caffeine it’s only the second Kiwi company to be accepted into the programme; the other is Victoria University spinout Liquium, which has patented technology that dramatically reduces the energy required to produce ammonia – one of the world’s most polluting chemicals. 

Chadderton says getting into the programme is “the top prize” for early-stage cleantech companies, bringing global credibility to the startups involved – something that can be difficult for a Kiwi company to achieve operating alone. 

“It’s Bill Gates, and everyone knows who Bill Gates is, but there are also guys like Twiggy Forrest who are also associated with the programme. There are real synergies to what we are doing and we hope to open up conversations with those types of individuals as well and see how our process could potentially dovetail into what they’re looking to develop.”

Chadderton advises other interested cleantech startups to get in early and engage with the programme because “there are huge opportunities, not just for the mentoring, technical and business help the programme offers, but also developing your people and business plans and all the other aspects that go with it”.

Aspiring Materials has developed a novel approach to industrial decarbonisation. Its technology mineralises commonly found rock, typically comprising the mineral olivine, to create a material capable of capturing carbon dioxide emissions either directly from the atmosphere or at the point source of emissions, such as industrial smoke stacks.  The technology captures and abates up to three tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions for every one tonne of olivine-rich rocks processed, with no chance of the carbon dioxide leaking back into the atmosphere. 

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Once the carbon has been captured under Aspiring Materials’ process, the carbon dioxide is bonded to the magnesium as a carbonate, forming a solid material that can also be used as a product in a variety of industries including food, fertilisers, building materials and medicines. 

Oze says being part of a global network of people at the leading edge of climate-tech was like oxygen for him and his co-founder.

“It’s been hard work to get here but we’re grateful that Breakthrough Energy exists to support people like us to bring our ideas to fruition. All we want is to get the world to net-zero, and with this opportunity we’re one step closer,” says Oze.

Those accepted into the programme had to demonstrate an ability or potential to reduce 500 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year at scale. 

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The demo plant

Aspiring Materials hopes to provide decarbonisation solutions for heavy industry such as concrete, steel and energy that are hard to abate due to their high carbon dioxide emissions and few decarbonisation options.

In September, the startup raised a further $1.5 million in a round led by new Kiwi venture capital firm Motion Capital. The company had earlier raised $1 million in 2021 in a pre-seed funding round led by Icehouse Ventures with support from Outset Ventures.

The latest funds are being used to progress the scale-up from lab to pilot plant.

Chadderton says detailed design plans for the Christchurch pilot plant are underway and the work should be completed in the first half of 2024. The plan is to begin processing 250 kilograms of rock daily, scaling up to one tonne.

The startup has already engaged with companies to trial both the carbon capture and products that evolve from the process, with an announcement due soon on some industrial scale trials with a large company. 

“The other thing about the [Breakthrough] programme is it opens up doorways to have those same sorts of conversations with the large players globally. It can be a negative and a positive being in New Zealand in that you can develop these technologies really well but most of them are global so you’ve then got to step into the global market to really influence some of the biggest industries out there,” says Chadderton.

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The company could be selling carbon credits back by the end of next year and is also hoping to expand into the Asia/Pacific region through collaborating with a partner to build a second pilot facility or scaled-up facility where it can start to sell more products, capture more carbon and then have a shot at commercial-scale operations.

“These plants are going to be big. They have to be big because we need a lot of carbon-capture capacity.  Also the market size is massive for the products that we’re producing so we’re talking millions of tonnes of opportunity to displace products that are made using fossil fuels. We’ve got a pretty good team to make that happen,” says Chadderton.

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The patent

On its website, Aspiring Materials says the company began through a conversation on a chance night out between two new dads who just needed a good night’s sleep. The only place they felt they could go to get that? Mars, of course.

Scott, associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Canterbury, and Oze, a geology professor who also worked at the university for some time, then collaborated for years on research to create materials for liveable, resilient structures on Mars.

But the creators of the Martian material Mascrete say they then realised what they were pursuing had more use to keep the Earth in balance for humanity’s survival. 

They bought the patent for their R&D work from the university and set up their company in 2019.

In Chadderton’s view, one of the detractors of being associated with universities is that they want too much for the IP when it is spun out into a commercial entity and they take a shareholding.

“This is a common conversation that I’m having with peers – that they don’t want to work at the universities because they’re asking too much and the universities, in my mind, given their financial situation, have to actually encourage researchers and businesses to interact with them.”

“If there was a message that needed to get back to the universities, it was they need to really rethink their model because it is disincentivising people to work with them,” he says.

Aspiring has had a Callaghan Innovation grant to further its research and help on applications such as the Breakthrough Energy programme, and worked closely with NZTE on developing its business plans.

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