Hexigone Inhibitors Ltd
Website: www.hexigone.com
Swansea University academics, Dr Patrick Dodds and Professor Geraint Williams developed an alternative to hexavalent chromate, a commonly used corrosion inhibitor, banned in the EU in 2019. The patented technology developed by the team creates a smart release coating that outperforms current coatings, made with traditional inhibitors, by over 10x. The product is of considerable interest to the global protective coatings market, one segment of which is the Coil Coated Steel Market in Europe, this is worth £ 3bn a year. The technology was assigned to Swansea University’s Spin-out company, Hexigone Inhibitors LTD, which piloted these formulations with a number of well-known global paint manufacturers.
AgorIP helped the academics from Swansea to form the company in 2016 and the Swansea University Investment Fund (SUIF) invested £25,000, matching the Venture Prize Award from the Worshipful Company of Armorers and Brasiers in 2017. Thanks to AgorIP support, the Hexigone team secured a number of innovation awards, non-diluting grant funds and commercial contracts, and as a result, they scaled up and were able to fully launch their innovative technology.
Hexigone are going from strength to strength, recently winning accolades from the Royal Society of Chemistry's Emerging Technology awards and the 2019 Wales Business Start-up Awards. Recently, the company has been helping in the COVID-19 pandemic by creating the hand sanitiser, to be distributed throughout the UK. In 2020, they went on to spinout from Swansea University.