OUR STORY
For decades, accessible mesoporous zeolites have been renowned for their outstanding performance in catalysis, but have been at the same time commercially overlooked based on the high price tag of the processes required to make them. In 2015-2016, groundbreaking research by Dr. Danny Verboekend at the KU Leuven Center for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis under supervision of Prof. Dr. Bert Sels, solved the problem: enabling to couple the benefits of high-quality accessible zeolites with a low-cost process of manufacturing. In the same group, Martin d’Halluin closely collaborated with Danny to explore the potential of the newly developed technologies. Next, in 2017 Danny and Martin formed, together with Kurt Du Mong, Zeopore’s founding team.
The initial investment round in 2018 by Innovation Fund and Gemma Frisius Fund allowed Zeopore to further finetune its core technology towards specific applications and feedstocks, in close collaboration with end-users and catalyst manufacturers. Zeopore also expanded its market activities towards all commercial types of zeolites, always keeping with strictly scalable and economic processes.
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Mid 2019 Peter Vancampenhout, an experienced process and technology developer, joined Zeopore. Peter focuses on strengthening the intrinsic properties of our mesoporised zeolites and further optimizing the process efficiency towards economics and capacity.
In 2020, Capricorn Partners led a financing round in which the existing shareholders ánd the KU Leuven strengthened their commitment. This substantial capital injection enables Zeopore to accelerate the commercialization of its technology platform for key refining and petrochemical processes. In addition, the financing round allows Zeopore to expand its knowledge and equipment base for industrial catalytic testing and pursue emerging opportunities in biomass and chemical conversion of plastic waste.
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This year, Natalia Gonzalez-Ogliastri joined as Quality Assurance Engineer. Natalia developed international experience and a great passion for standardization, quality systems, and continuous improvement, which she applies at Zeopore.
From the start, Zeopore has been located in Leuven (Belgium), near one of Europe’s largest petrochemical clusters. Innovation is at the heart of Leuven. In 2020 the city was awarded 'European Capital of Innovation' by the European Commission and its university heads Europe's list of most innovative universities.
Core technologies developed within KU Leuven
2015 - 2016
2017
2018
2018
2019
Founding of Zeopore Technologies
Initial investment round by Innovation Fund, Gemma Frisius Fund KU Leuven
Kurt Du Mong appointed as CEO
Danny Verboekend joins as CTO
Martin d'Halluin joins as Development Engineer
Peter Vancampenhout joins as Development Engineer
Catalytic benefits of Zeopore's mesoporisation demonstrated in key refining processes
2020
Investment round led by Capricorn Partners with participations and continued support from existing shareholders
Large customer interest leads to next step in joint development and scale-up
2021
Natalia Gonzalez-Ogliastri joins as Quality Assurance Engineer
Zeopore's modification technologies are tested in biomass and plastic waste conversion