The past 4 months we have developed a thorough Feasibility study to guarantee the techno-economic viability of our project. Here we present the main areas of focus and the results obtained:
Task 1: Technical Feasibility: This task provides a technical description of SolardeSaLt technology and its specifications, definition of the manufacturing and operating requirements, schedule for its development and industrial testing to validate experimental results, evaluation of the physical development (planning and costs) and accomplishment of a technical risk assessment in order to define a mitigation and contingency plan.
Task 2 Business plan development: We have developed a living document projecting 5 years into the future, outlining the necessary collaborative investments, development next-steps and future commercialization efforts. A market and risk analysis has been conducted in order to overcome competing solutions and best satisfy user requirements. We have divided the Business Plan in 4 subtasks:
Subtask 1 - Market analysis: We conducted a complete market research and analysis of the global desalination and water reuse sector, with a particular emphasis in European countries, including international and EU SM regulation.
Subtask 2 - Business opportunities: A stakeholder survey has been performed, which has helped us to complete a revised strategy for our pre-commercialization activities, the formalization of the necessary partner alliances, and all the activities to be carried out in order to get SolardeSaLt to success.
Subtask 3 - Financial projections: We have assessed the production costs and determined the selling price of SolardeSaLt. Later we developed three possible scenarios for our technology selling, including a “best”, a “conservative” and a “worst” scenario. We rigorously evaluated the possibilities and advantages over the competition, as well as the market barriers, the payback for our company and for the end users, and we have demonstrated theSolardeSaLt great commercial potential. Finally, we evaluated the economic needs for its development and demonstrated that Hydro Italia, with a 70% of EU funding, has the resources to complete the project.
Subtask 4 - IPR strategies: A deep evaluation and subsequent strategy of IP protection for SolardeSaLt technology and key features has been executed. A research of the State of the Art desalination technology has been performed as well as a FTO for the selected markets. We determined our commercial and IPR strategy according to the findings of this research, and we intend to protect our technology with a European patent in order to defend our innovations.
