Private equity-backed waste water company Ostara opens US treatment facility

12 June 2009

Waste water technology company Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies has opened the first waste water treatment facility in the US to incorporate its technology on a commercial scale. The company is backed by Frog Capital, the London-based private equity firm that invests growth capital in cleantech and ICT businesses.

Clean Water Services’ Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility opened this week in Oregon and is a public/private partnership between Clean Water Services, a water resource management utility, and Ostara. The two companies will share revenue from the commercial sale of the fertiliser by-product.

The facility is projected to remove more than 90 per cent of the phosphorus in the waste water and produce 500 tons of fertiliser annually. Clean Water Services anticipates operational cost savings of approximately $500,000 a year from incorporating Ostara’s technology.

Robert F Kennedy, Jr., the environmental lawyer and a Director of Ostara, said, ‘The incorporation of the Ostara technology is the kind of infrastructure solution needed in hundreds of municipalities across the United States. Local and state governments should take note that the win-win benefits of improved economics and reduced environmental impact achieved here can be replicated throughout the US.’

Several other commercial applications of the Ostara technology are in planning and design stages after successful field trials since 2007 by municipal authorities, ethanol biofuel plants and food processing plants in the US and Canada. Ostara estimates that approximately 200 plants in North America and several hundred plants in Europe and the rest of the world are candidates for the Ostara technology.

Iyad Omari, who leads Frog Capital’s cleantech investments, said ‘We are pleased with the progress Ostara has made, which endorses our strategy of investing in companies that find new business models or profitable solutions to a current problem. It’s not just about technology innovation, but about creating a new business model or a business for a certain need or requirement.’

Frog Capital was founded in 2005 as Foursome Investments. The firm has made six investments in cleantech, of which one has been partially exited. Investments include SIG Processing, a German-based business recycling key elements from semiconductor and solar panel production; UK solar energy company Solar Century; and Hydrodec, which recycles transformer oil.

Copyright © 2009 NewNet

Tags: cleantech, private equity, recycling, waste, water

This story was published on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Europe, North America, companies, water. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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