Stoli Catalysts of Coventry, in the UK, has been awarded €1.2m (£1.1m) in funding to build and test a small-scale pilot plant to make medicines, vitamins and food supplements at a much lower cost and more sustainably using its patented continuous-flow catalytic reactor technology. The funding comes from the European Innovation Council (EIC) SME Instrument scheme.
Lawrie Matthews, CEO of Stoli Catalysts, commented: "This is an exciting business that could transform continuous throughput manufacturing of fine chemicals and lower costs significantly for the pharmaceutical sector." Matthews is the former Global Chemicals Business Development Manager at Johnson Matthey.
This is an exciting business that could transform continuous throughput manufacturing of fine chemicals
Stoli is a spin-out company from the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick by Professor Evgeny Rebrov and Dr Nikolay Cherkasov of the University of Warwick's Engineering School in 2017.
The company has since developed its technology to create catalyst-coated tubes for use in continuous flow reactors. It will enable the £600 billion fine chemicals industry to convert from batch to continuous flow, thereby dramatically cutting production costs.
Cutting productions costs
Stoli Catalysts' patented technology and reactor designs use 100-1,000 times less precious metal, enabling potential production cost reductions of 20-80%.
With the EIC grant, the company can now move from lab-scale projects to pilot continuous flow production.
Stoli Catalysts has set up facilities on the University of Warwick's Wellesbourne campus and is hiring four new chemical engineering developers and expanding its commercial team."
"Stoli'sBesides cutting production costs dramatically, Stoli's technology is much more sustainable, using less energy and generating less waste," Matthews added."
