The Gap Nobody Has Plugged

Despite being the rails on which innovation has taken place, the industries of metal recovery, desalination and petroleum extraction have not been so ahead of the curve. Until recently they relied on chemical intuition rather than accurate, real-time process measurement.

"Until now, no technology could do this reliably in high-temperature, highly acidic, or alkaline industrial streams," Dr. Mantescu says. "The cost of this gap is staggering – combined production losses across these industries exceed $1 trillion. Watergenics has changed that. We measure what was previously unmeasurable, where it matters most."

The consequences of operating without real-time water chemistry data are not abstract. Industrial processes that make decisions based on sample-and-wait methods in environments where conditions change by the hour are running blind. This results in wasted reagent, suboptimal recovery, unnecessary energy consumption and environmental risk that early detection could prevent entirely.

Obsessing over the problem

"Before we even incorporated, we had already spent years understanding what the industry truly needed," Dr. Mantescu says of building the other way around to tech looking for a problem. 

"The company was then built with the single, clear purpose of real-time process monitoring of industrial aqueous streams. We are a product-centred company that started with a customer problem and engineered the solution."

That clarity is visible in the product itself. Watergenics’s ABAIA® sensor is designed specifically for the harshest aquatic industrial environments imaginable. Paired with their REFLEKT dashboard, which delivers real-time visualisation and machine learning-powered predictions, the full platform gives operators the kind of continuous, actionable water chemistry data that had simply not existed in the market before.

Watergenics was selected for Rio Tinto Mining Tech Cohort 4 from more than 500 global applications and sits part of a cohort spun out from the likes of Harvard, Cambridge and Stanford. That validation did not surprise a founder who had spent years making sure the problem, the product and the market were genuinely aligned before building anything.

Opening the Right Doors

Certified technology and a clear commercial thesis are a strong foundation. Navigating the corporate complexity of the global mining industry is a different challenge however – one that typically takes years to work through without the right relationships.

"Founders Factory gave us access to the right people and the right information to build a credible go-to-market strategy in the metal recovery space," Dr. Mantescu says. "Something that would have taken us years to develop independently."

Rio Tinto's involvement has extended that access further. Its in-house expertise across mineralogy, chemicals and commercialisation, combined with its operational facilities and global partner network, has given Watergenics the environment to move from proven technology to validated commercial deployment — at the scale that only a major mining operator can provide.

The next milestone crystallises how far that progress has come. This summer, Watergenics will be piloting with Rio Tinto in Argentina — a re-validation of its technology in the lithium space by one of the world's most demanding industry leaders, and a commercial step that carries significance well beyond the pilot itself.

"I am deeply grateful for the quality of support and the amount of effort from both Rio Tinto and the Founders Factory teams," Dr. Mantescu says. "This is, without question, the best incubation programme Watergenics has been part of."

For a company built from the start around solving a real problem in the right way, it is a fitting place to be.

Watergenics is part of Rio Tinto Mining Cohort 4.