According to the UN and the WHO, every 21 seconds, a child, and about 3.5 million people in a year die in the developing countries owing to waterborne diseases caused by drinking contaminated water. The European water filter market is estimated to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 10.3% throughout the foreseen period.
The situation in the growing economies of Europe is getting worse. The scarcity of fresh water, and the increase in pollution & population, are a few factors that have been increasing the incidence of waterborne diseases and hence boosting the demand for water purification systems.
Raises €3M
This is where Sofi Filtration steps in. The company has raised €3M in a fresh round of funding led by Emerald Technology Ventures and joined by Voima Ventures. This is the first investment of Emerald’s recently announced water innovation impact fund.
Alongside the primary transaction, a secondary transaction was conducted with selected investors including Loudspring. As part of this transaction, Helge Daebel, Emerald Partner for water activities, has joined the board of Sofi Filtration.
Daebel explains, “Sofi Filtration offers a unique, rugged, low-touch and very efficient filtration system for several large industrial markets that are facing significant challenges. Examples are upstream mining and oil & gas production processes, where the amount of water needed per unit of materials extracted increases, while fresh water availability decreases.”
State-of-the-art water filtration technology
Founded in 2011 by Pertti Rantala, Simo Aho, and Ville Hakala, Sofi Filtration is a Finnish provider of state-of-the-art water filtration technology.
The Finland-based company is backed by public innovation development funds as well as private investors. The company offers water treatment solutions that are robust and highly automated with the industry’s best performance.
Sofi Filter’s automatic and energy-efficient microfiltration solutions can be applied to many industries such as mining, metallurgical, among others.
Sofi Filter’s other developments
Earlier this year the company received funds from the Baltic Sea Action Plan Fund (BSAP). The Fund was jointly managed by Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (NEFCO) and the Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) and is financed by contributions from the governments of Finland and Sweden.
The funds helped the company to purify wastewater on-site. The microplastics that enter larger water streams and eventually in the Baltic Sea, can be removed on-site with the help of Sofi Filter – it can remove as small as 0.3 µm plastic particles from the water flow. With the funds granted, the company will be able to offer plastic manufacturing, recycling, or treatment plants Sofi piloting on-site.
In May this year, a waste-to-energy plant in Tampere, Finland – which incinerates 160,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste annually – equipped with the latest technology – was producing excess amounts of flue gas condensate water. Sofi Filtration helped the plant to save costs and increased the power plant energy output by 5-10%.
In 2015, Sofi Filtration had raised €50,000 grant from EASME – EU Executive Agency for SMEs and an undisclosed amount from Loudspring.
Image credit: Sofi Filtration