Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 25th April 2024 Issue no. 1111
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High-performance Propelair toilet launches £3.2M funding campaign
This week the UK manufacturers and patent holders of the world's lowest-water-flush toilet Propelair are launching a £3.2M funding round, including via investment platform Seedrs.
Phoenix Product Development, which trades as Propelair, saves water, saves customers money and improves hygiene - one flush at a time.
The investment will be raised from both new and current investors to boost sales, expand into new markets and add further services and innovations.
Water scarcity is a growing problem. The UN forecasts a 40% shortfall in global supply by 2030 while in the UK, water companies believe demand will exceed supply by 2025 in some regions. Yet traditional toilets send an average of nine litres of drinking water down the drain per flush.
Propelair's patent-protected technology is engineered specifically for commercial, public and high-footfall locations with high bathroom demand. Toilets in hospitals, universities, shopping centres, conference venues, fast-food restaurants and motorway service stations can be used hundreds of times a day, accounting for nearly half the total cost of out-of-home water use in the UK.
Propelair toilets are saving customers nearly 1billion litres a year - enough to fill 25 oil tankers, with payback within months in some higher-use locations, which should reassure employers expecting increased hand-washing at work. Owners pay less for maintenance due to robust engineering and reduce their carbon footprint, as significantly less water is processed upstream and down. Unlike costly alternatives, Propelair connects directly with existing plumbing systems.
Propelair combines just 1.5 litres of water with a high-speed jet of air to leave the pan super-clean in one flush. The closed lid helps improve hygiene by reducing airborne germs including Covid-19 by 95%.
With more than 3,600 Propelair units installed in the UK and South Africa, the company's new management team is talking to organisations about over 40,000 toilets in the UK and South Africa and will be targeting water-stressed Australia and countries in the Middle East. Following earlier investments by Investec and Earth Capital Partners, Propelair is developing innovations such as IoT connectivity to enable customers to measure water performance and utilise a zero-capital service offering.
Propelair has won numerous industry certifications and standards and was awarded the European Horizon2020 grant in 2017 to develop new innovations.
"This is a very exciting time for the company - Propelair is a big advance in water saving and given we all need the loo, has huge implications for everyone," notes David Hollander, CEO, Propelair and former Dyson managing director. "Having made good progress, we are now inviting people to join our mission - to save water, save our customers money, improve hygiene in shared areas and help save the planet, one flush at a time."
https://propelair.com
www.seedrs.com
18th June 2020