“Where there’s muck, there’s brass”. So the saying goes. But in the case of New Zealand academic spinoff venture – formerly known as Zincovery – it was more a case of, wherever there’s horrid industrial waste there’s zinc. So when chemistry student Jonathan Ring and his Masters supervisor Dr Aaron Marshall discovered just how much of that waste was going down the drain and leaching into the environment, they decided to do something about it. Six years on, the company has a new brand and bold vision to extract and recycle a range of critical minerals from industrial waste.
With environmental stewardship becoming increasingly important and local manufacturers queuing up seeking help, the chemistry whizzes dreamed up a prototype to test drive processing collected waste. Supported by KiwiNet and with business advisory from ThincLab at the University of Canterbury Business School, the pair put together a plan to take the technology global. Along with support from the university, the team also scored a $1 million seed round from both local angels and offshore investors. Meanwhile Jonathan Ring continued to work on developing the business during the summer programme for academic entrepreneurs at the University of Canterbury Centre for Entrepreneurship, with the support of local mentors.
Zincovery literally began life by recovering heavy metals from toxic acid waste. The waste being a by-product of industrial galvanising processes used for applying protective zinc coatings to metallic building materials. By applying the research in a clever way, high value zinc was separated out and the acid recycled for further use by the manufacturers. Importantly, the process required substantially less energy (and lower carbon emissions) than previous methods. A huge win for the environment.
Interested in science research commercialisation? Click on this invite link to join our free research and business collaboration channel on Discord. Meet potential co-founders, investors and industry contacts.
Zincovery continued its winning ways by outpacing 140 other entrants in the 2020 C-Prize competition. The event judges saw the value immediately and were so impressed that Zincovery walked away with winnings of $100,000 in 2020 and a $1million pre-seed fund raise shortly afterwards. But the company had to make a major pivot during the Covid years when the original target market did not pan out. However this groundwork led to identifying a much larger global market dealing with zinc coated steel recycling. A further $3million in capital was secured during 2022 followed by a reported $9.1M “pre-series A” being completed in 2024.
Armed with fresh funding, the company set about establishing a proof of concept production facility in Christchurch NZ. Lately, with rising geopolitical tensions and concerns over critical minerals supply chains becoming hot-button topics globally, the business undertook a branding and strategy refresh. Renamed Zethos, the company now applies its patented reduction kiln technology to extract a range of critical minerals from industrial waste streams.
Genius ReFi connects researchers, entrepreneurs, investors and industry to build high value science-based ventures.
Join our free collaboration channel on Discord
Photo credit: Jonathan Ring. Zethos CEO and co-founder.
