THE OCEAN IMPACT PITCHFEST 2021 FINALISTS ANNOUNCED
Check Out the Winners and Runners Up Here
After a seven-week application period and a two-week shortlisting process, the Finalists of The Ocean Impact Pitchfest 2021 were revealed today. The twelve finalists were shortlisted from 215 applications received from 45 countries.
The Finalists are (in alphabetical order):
Ace Aquatec (UK); Aquaai (Norway); Atlantic Sea Farms (USA): Better Packaging Co. (NZ): Firetail Robotics (Australia); Great Wrap (Australia); Litterati (USA); Matter. (UK); nextProtein (Netherlands); Pinovo AS (Norway); Saathi (India); Sea Forest (Australia).
Scroll down to read all about the Finalists and watch their pitch videos.
The Ocean Impact Pitchfest 2021 marked the second year that Australian-based Ocean Impact Organisation (OIO) delivered the global Pitchfest campaign calling for applications from startups with innovative and scalable solutions to help transform the health of the ocean. Presenting Partner of Pitchfest 2020, Bank Australia was this year joined by HP as co-Presenting Partner of Pitchfest and sponsor of the inaugural HP Generation Impact Incubator.
Leveraging off the success of the 2020 campaign, Pitchfest 2021 resulted in significant growth in the quality and quantity of applications, due to an increase in the total cash prize pool ($150,000 in 2021 compared to $15,000 in 2020) and dedicated efforts to attract startups from the growing, global ocean impact innovation ecosystem.
For Co-founder and CEO of OIO, Nick Chiarelli, the result indicated a sign of what’s to come for the growing organisation. “OIO exists to drive the development of ocean health innovation in Australia and globally. In the two years since launching we have seen the global ‘ocean impact landscape’ develop rapidly with more startups being uncovered and increased investor interest,” said Chiarelli, “applicants to Pitchfest 2021 have raised a total of almost $350milUSD investment capital vs $65milUSD in Pitchfest 2020. This is a solid increase but we need much much more capital if we're to get serious about transforming ocean health and sustaining a rapidly growing population”.
Whilst increased investment capital from applying startups year on year indicates a growing trend globally, applications from Australian startups represented just 34% of the total pool with the overall stage of Australian startups lower than their counterparts in the US and Europe. These statistics provide Chiarelli with the motivation to achieve one of OIO’s key goals: to put Australia on the map as a key source of innovation and investment for the ocean globally.
Chiarelli continues, “This is a key moment in time where we still have a chance to support ocean health and the broader health of our people and planet through innovation. But we need more capital because great ideas and great innovators follow the money. To help accelerate the development of the early stage ocean impact startup landscape OIO will be supporting the launch of the Ocean Impact Startup Fund in early 2022 that will have a mandate to invest in early stage startups that can generate competitive financial returns whilst simultaneously improving ocean health”.
In a collaborative effort to ensure that Australia’s ocean innovation landscape has a bright future, OIO joined forces with HP Australia to this year launch the HP Generation Impact Incubator. A dedicated program for young (35 and under) innovators residing in Australia, the Winner of Generation Impact will receive $40,000 cash, HP Technology and expert mentorship from OIO and HP to help bring their ocean innovation to life.
From a total of 84 applications, eight shortlisted Finalists for Generation Impact were revealed today showcasing a diverse range of solutions to transform the future of ocean health.
The shortlisted Finalists (in alphabetical order) are: Annette McClelland from Tekuma; Curtis Sciacca from Nurtured.Co; Emile Theau from Sine Surf; Josh Howard from Single Use Ain’t Sexy; Joshua Castle from Blue Symbiosis; Lottie Dalziel from Banish; Maria Isabel Toasa Cordero from EM Energy and Sian Murray from Pleasant State.
Mike Boyle, Managing Director, HP Australia and New Zealand said of the Generation Impact result “With over 80 innovative ideas from different industries submitted to the Incubator program, we know there’s strong appetite for young Australians to make real change and transform ocean health. This thinking could not come at a more crucial time, with The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s latest report issuing a code red for humanity, and calling on government, business, industry and individuals to make change now. And while we’re making strong strides at HP, we know that real, lasting impact is achieved through partnership, and at scale. We’re looking forward to announcing the winner of the HP Generation Impact Incubator and help empower and enables Australia young innovators to solve some the most pressing challenges facing the ocean.”
The Winners, Runners Up and recipients of Spotlight Awards for this year’s Ocean Impact Pitchfest and Generation Impact Incubator campaigns will be announced on 4th November 2021.
To learn more about The Ocean Impact Pitchfest 2021 Finalists visit here.
To learn more about the HP Generation Impact Incubator Finalists visit here.
To learn more about The Ocean Impact Pitchfest 2020 Finalists visit here.
PITCHFEST 2021 finalists
ACE AQUATEC
Website: www.aceaquatec.com/
Headquarters: Dundee, United Kingdom
Year Commenced: 2007
Ocean Theme: Ocean Health & Ocean Harvesting
Mission: To use technology and creativity to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable and responsible aquaculture.
Solution: Ace Aquatec has developed a complete automated solution for the humane slaughter of wild fish and farmed fish. Currently wild fish are dropped into the holds of fishing vessels where they asphyxiate or are crushed over many hours. Ace Aquatec's technology utilises an innovative pump design fed by water jets to transport the fish. In the pipework a series of embedded electrodes electrify the water column to render the fish unconscious, regardless of size or species. Fish are then transported to a bleeding system, which uses the power of A.I to track fish and locate the aorta. Robotic arms are guided by structured light cameras, and a high power waterjet delivers a cut across the aorta. This humane slaughter solution provides the first responsible method for harvesting fish at sea and on fish farms, avoiding stress, downgraded quality, and guaranteeing a humane death to the thousands of fish slaughtered in our oceans.
AQUAAI
Website: www.aquaai.com/
Headquarters: Oslo, Norway
Year Commenced: 2014
Ocean Theme: New Frontiers, Ocean Health, Ocean Harvesting
Mission: Aquaai’s mission is to help keep humanity alive through sustainable and environmentally friendly practices by combining risk management and biomimicry. The vision is to collect the most accurate underwater information by using affordable, innovative bio-inspired robotic technology and provide the data to marine industries currently balancing growth challenges with environmental concerns, therefore ensuring a positive impact in our ocean, fresh waterways and the planet as a whole.
Solution: Aquaai offers the easiest, most effective and least expensive way to access visual and environmental data from all waterways mitigating risks caused by a growing population and the climate crisis. Aquaai's flexible, fishlike drone platform navigates via AI and computer vision immersing with the habitat getting up close for optimized data collection and delivers the data to an online dashboard. Fish-as-a-Service (FaaS™) services Blue Economy industries, scientific researchers & governments delivering much needed data affordably so they can operate sustainably. Aquaai is helping mitigate risk by providing water quality knowledge about our rivers, ports and harbours, coasts, etc. that ultimately preserves our ocean health.
ATLANTIC SEA FARMS
Website: www.atlanticseafarms.com
Headquarters: Biddeford, Maine, US
Year Commenced: 2018
Ocean Theme: New Frontiers, Ocean Health, Ocean Harvesting
Mission: Good food should do good. At Atlantic Sea Farms, our kelp is grown in the clean, cold waters of Maine by our community of partner farmers. We are dedicated to making a powerful and positive impact on the health of our customers and oceans by creating craveable and innovative products made from regeneratively farmed sea greens, all while expanding opportunities for coastal communities in the face of climate change.
Solution: Our ocean is changing – and Maine’s coastal economy is now almost entirely dependent on one species: lobster. But there is hope - Mainers are known for ingenuity, stewardship, and fierce independence. That’s why we knew that working with our own local fishing communities to cultivate kelp was the best way to build a first-to-market supply chain and improve the health of our coastal environment and economy in the process. Together we are helping to diversify coastal incomes, reduce ocean acidification, and, by working alongside our neighbours, grow, harvest, and share delicious, sustainable, and mineral-rich sea greens with the world. We identify, and work with, fishermen throughout the coast of Maine to help them start their own kelp farms. We provide technical assistance to help these farmers get farm leases, set up their gear, learn how to seed and harvest, and support their business planning. We also provide free seeds to all of our farmers and guarantee purchase of their crop. Atlantic Sea Farms also creates award winning products to grow a market for Maine grown kelp, and increase awareness of how kelp aquaculture can be a tool in fighting the effects of climate change on our oceans and economies.
BETTER PACKAGING CO.
Website: www.betterpackaging.com
Headquarters: Auckland, NZ
Year Commenced: 2018
Ocean Theme: Ocean Health
Mission: BPCo is on a mission to design out the waste associated with packaging through innovative materials, systems rethink, education, communication and clever design.
Solution: We’re working with communities in the world’s poorest and most polluted coastal regions and pay them a fair wage to clean up their beaches and rivers by collecting plastic pollution, we take this pollution and convert it into packaging. In doing so we help lift them out of poverty and get plastic out of our oceans and back into circulation, to ultimately be recycled infinitely. Plastic pollution is the most widespread problem affecting the marine environment. Marine wildlife is ingesting, being suffocated and entangled by plastic pollution.
FIRETAIL ROBOTICS
Website: www.firetailrobotics.com
Headquarters: Albury, Australia
Year Commenced: 2016
Ocean Theme: New Frontiers, Ocean Health, Ocean Harvesting
Mission: Hardware innovation is “hard”. We simplify complex hardware innovation projects, cleverly linking together all components so it is easy to use, easy to deploy, and easy to maintain in the field.
Solution: Capturing underwater video footage in marine environments to measure and identify fish and sample populations has traditionally been technically and logistically challenging. With the Lagoon AI Camera Orb, Firetail Robotics has set out to revolutionise this process. In fact, we’ve partnered with leading Australian research and commercial organisations including Griffith University to develop what we believe is a world leading approach to accuracy and automation of underwater fish ID and measurement by creating a flexible, full featured and cost effective marine sensing platform.
GREAT WRAP
Website: www.greatwrap.co
Headquarters: Melbourne, Australia
Year Commenced: 2019
Ocean Theme: New Frontiers, Inspiration and Leisure
Mission: To put an end to petroleum based plastics. We manufacture compostable stretch wrap using mainly food waste.
Solution: We are inventing biomaterials that will allow future polymers to be marine degradable. We are working with major Australian supermarkets to make this a commercially viable option too. So far we have removed nearly 2+ million metres from landfill. We take food waste that would go to landfill and create methane and turn that into a plastic alternative.
LITTERATI
Website: www.litterati.org
Headquarters: Chapel Hill, USA
Year Commenced: 2014
Ocean Theme: New Frontiers, Ocean Health
Mission: To create a litter-free world.
Solution: Litterati empowers people to catalog and collect the world's litter, by providing the "ground truth" -- the objects, materials, and brands leaking out of the system -- we can stop litter at its source. The Litterati app allows users to capture the image, location and description of litter that they have collected. This information is then added to a database that can be utilised for a whole range of purposes. Through the power of a passionate community & brilliant partners, Litterati have seen a growing number of governments, corporations, NGOs, schools, & individuals use litter data to create policy changes that help systematically reduce litter.
MATTER.
Website: www.matter.industries/
Headquarters: Bristol, United Kingdom
Year Commenced: 2018
Ocean Theme: Ocean Health
Mission: We are an innovation company pioneering technology solutions for capturing, harvesting and recycling microplastics.
Solution: Microplastics represent the largest proportion of ocean plastics. They are entering the food chain and damaging the ocean's capacity to produce oxygen and capture carbon from the atmosphere. Our technology can capture, harvest and recycle microplastic emissions to generate value from waste in a sustainable way, at scale. We use the same technology for every pollution stream: Capable of capturing over 99% of all microfibre emissions in waste-water; No disposables, cartridges or replaceable components; Easy to install and empty; and Fibres captured can be harvested, creating a valuable resource for new products.
NEXTPROTEIN
Website: www.nextprotein.co
Headquarters: Paris, France
Year Commenced: 2015
Ocean Theme: Ocean Health
Mission: Producing insect-based proteins and oils as a sustainable, healthy and competitive alternative to fish-based products thereby limiting overfishing and food waste.
Solution: nextProtein is specialised in the breeding and processing of insects for animal feeding (aquaculture in particular). Feeding farmed fishes with insect meal instead of fishmeal has a direct impact on the preservation of the ocean fish stocks A ton of insect meal fed to farmed fishes would save three tons of forage fish. More prosaically, every ton of product that we sell to fish farmers contributes to reducing the depletion of forage fish stocks by three tons.
PINOVO AS
Website: www.pinovo.com
Headquarters: Bergen, Norway
Year Commenced: 2009
Ocean Theme: Ocean Health
Mission: To stop Ocean Paint Microplastic Emissions.
Solution: 50% of all paint is plastic and, when it comes off steel structures during blasting in service maintenance, it ends up in the ocean in a form of microplastic pollution. Steel structures such as oil rigs, ships, and wind turbines, are generally located in or next to the ocean. Pinovo has developed a closed loop circular vacuum blasting system that stops paint microplastics from entering the ocean by removing it at its source during maintenance.
Pinovo’s patented technology and equipment recover paint residuals, rust and blasting material during surface treatment. Waste is then safely disposed of and Pinovo aims to incorporate a recycling solution as their technology develops. It is estimated that total paint microplastic pollution could be between 1.5-2.25 million tonnes per year. By using Pinovo’s vacuum technology, paint microplastics are prevented from entering the ocean.
SAATHI
Website: www.saathipads.com/
Headquarters: Ahmedabad, India
Year Commenced: 2016
Ocean Theme: Ocean Health
Mission: Saathi’s mission is to create hygienic products that are good for the body, community and environment in a sustainable and responsible way.
Solution: Saathi is preventing conventional plastic-based sanitary pads from entering the ocean. Conventional pads take around 600 years to degrade and contribute to the approx. 8 million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year. Saathi has developed a range of sustainable menstrual products that are made from renewable materials, such as banana fibre.
Saathi is addressing an important issue, to provide a hygienic and effective sanitary alternative to improve the lives of women and remove the negative environmental impact of this industry. The team ensures that their product is accessible to women no matter where they live or work. Their pads do not contain bleach or chemicals and are more comfortable and safer to use. Saathi pads degrade within six months, 1200 times faster than conventional pads.
SEA FOREST
Website: www.seaforest.com.au
Headquarters: Triabunna, Australia
Year Commenced: 2018
Ocean Theme: Ocean Health, Ocean Harvesting, New Frontiers
Mission: Pioneering the cultivation of a natural solution to climate change.
Solution: Sea Forest has developed the technology required to cultivate asparagopsis seaweed at scale, which when fed to livestock reduces methane emissions by 90%. Sea Forest's sustainable cultivation technology unlocks the capacity to reduce global emissions by up to 15%, whilst pioneering the development of a new and environmentally positive Seaweed industry for Australia.