Three AkzoNobel Paint the Future Award start-ups have signed letters of intent to continue working on sustainable business opportunities with the company.
“The winning start-ups are joining our go-to-market acceleration programme, connecting them to a global network of people and resources,” said Menno van der Zalm, Director of the AkzoNobel Incubator. “Over the next six months, we’ll work together to validate their solutions for our customers and develop a joint value case.”
The solution from Israeli start-up SolCold is a sustainable self-cooling coating based on anti-Stokes. AkzoNobel said it uses the sun’s energy to keep interior temperature much cooler without using electricity.
“As a group of engineers and scientists, we know how to do R&D very well,” said Yaron Shenhav, CEO of SolCold. “But what we lack is the ability to mass-produce and scale our very innovative product. So, collaborating with AkzoNobel is the perfect fit.”
A robotic solution to wind turbine maintenance, from Latvian start-up Aerones, is a crawling robot which allows technicians to perform inspections, cleaning, and repairs safely and efficiently at height.
“We had a great experience and as we made new friends this week it started to feel like a real family,” said Janis Putrams, CTO and co-founder of Aerones. “We’re excited to work together with AkzoNobel to improve the generation of renewable energy. We would like to surprise our clients with a solution that combines our technology and AkzoNobel’s unique expertise in protective coatings.”
Czech Republic start-up SprayVision has a data-driven approach to optimising spray application of paint, offering customers full control over the process. AkzoNobel said the solution helps reduce environmental impact by saving material and improving quality.
“What a great week – it exceeded our expectations,” said Petr Jahn, CEO of SprayVision. “We learned a lot from connecting with the other start-ups and getting such challenging questions from the AkzoNobel team. They’ll introduce us to completely new fields we’re not currently active in, which represent big opportunities for collaboration.”