NanoPowder Plant – Metal nanopowders for a world of great opportunities

Project Information

NPP

Grant agreement ID: 876307

DOI

10.3030/876307

Project closed

EC signature date 7 August 2019

Start date 1 September 2019

End date 29 February 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

AB NANOPOWDER PLANT
Lithuania

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NPP (NanoPowder Plant – Metal nanopowders for a world of great opportunities)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2020-02-29

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Nanopowder Plant is a company aimed at development of easy scalable solution for production of high-quality metal nanopowders. Current supply of metal nanopowders on the world market falls short on demand, creating further obstacles to the technical progress in such industries as agriculture, medicine, aerospace manufacturing, power machinery, engineered materials production, civil engineering and others. The solution, developed by company team prevalence over other existing technologies in production capacity of metal nanopowders with the highest existing quality of the nanopowder produced.

Nanopowders application allows most manufacturing industries replace scarce resources with their analogues coated with nanometals. Also, efficient ways of nanopowder production are important for society as they ensure low environmental pollution due to energy efficiency of the solution and absence of need to use waste-generating chemical reagents during production process.

At the Phase 1 project, Nanopowder Plant team focused at such objectives as strengthening market needs understanding, establishment of sustainable business and IPR strategies, in order to support technical solution with strong business understanding foundation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the SME instrument Phase 1 project Nanopowder Plant conducted in-depth analysis of target markets and validated its market entry strategy and unique value proposition, developed IPR protection strategy and elaborated the business plan. The project team performed the following activities and achieved respective results during implementation of the project:
• Based on numerous interviews with market players Nanopowder Plant selected target customers for the solution and integrated the defined priorities into the general market strategy
• In-depth analysis of target clients’ pain points and existing alternative solutions allowed to define Nanopowder Plant unique value proposition
• During the IPR strategy development Nanopowder Plant team created a plan for strengthening IPR portfolio in addition to existing patent applications and initiated PCT search
• Nanopowder Plant elaborated its business plan for rapid global commercialization, having defined its strategy considering both the nature of the market and its dynamics, as well as the current stage of alternative technologies developed globally

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

At the same time with SME instrument Phase 1 project, Nanopowder Plant team also progressed with the further development of its technical solution. The working prototype was scaled to pilot serial production facilities confirming scalability of the project and its wide perspective for further implementation. Also, the project team discovered new important application for nanopowder products – nanofertilizers (and antibacterial properties of nano silver and copper (antiseptics, antibacterial tissues and etc.). The application of nanopowders as fertilizers will allow to increase the productivity of all kinds of crops with unified product, thus the project contributes to the solution of the issue of food security and universalizes its impact widening the scope from highly developed countries with intensive tech-sector to the developing economies.

Vacuum chamber of the solution.

View of working prototype of the solution

General concept scheme of the solution