Interview – September 7, 2023
In a double interview in Management Scope tell our Managing Partner Laura Rooseboom and Edwin de Graaf from Guild Healthcare about their role as investors in companies shaping the transition to a better world. They realize that with the financial resources they are in a position to make a change. 'Global warming, refugee flows… the challenges are clear.'
Thirona was founded in 2014 by Eva van Rikxoort and Bram van Ginneken. With a team of leading software engineers and medical researchers, Thirona develops AI technology for automated analysis of medical scans. The company has the unique combination of in-house expertise and access to medical data for further product development, focusing on software solutions for the diagnosis of lung and eye diseases. Thirona's mission is to bridge the gap between academic advances in medical scan analysis and their clinical utility, by offering products that provide state-of-the-art deep learningusing technology to assist medical specialists in their daily activities.
The Next Closet in is a sustainable marketplace for second-hand luxury fashion. With its modern and forward-looking vision, the Amsterdam-based company makes luxury fashion affordable and encourages the idea of a circular economy in which beloved items are reused instead of thrown away. The Next Closet's mission is to make the second-hand clothing market mainstream – saying no to fast fashion and choose quality over quantity.
E-magy develops silicon-based battery technology. Batteries that are widely used at the moment are running up against the maximum energy density of carbon. It is increasingly becoming a bottleneck for more efficient batteries. E-magy's battery technology has the potential to triple the storage capacity of batteries.
The Fabricant is the world's leading digital fashion house and pioneered the digitization of the fashion industry. With their cutting edge designs, vision and technology, they have clients like and partnered with Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger, Under Armor, Atari, RTFKT, Puma, Peak Performance and Buffalo London, just to name a few. The Fabricant's long-term vision is to create tools and products that transform the fashion industry into a fully digital existence in both production and consumption, while democratizing fashion creation into a collaborative process utilizing 3D technology and the creativity of the consumer, accessible to everyone.
Zielwear is a 'fashion on-demand' company, with the vision and ambition to facilitate on-demand production on a large scale. Zielwear is building a technology platform to design, manufacture and supply clothing to companies based on actual consumer demand. Zielwear does this under the leadership of serial entrepreneur, Marleen Vogelaar. As co-founder of Shapeways, Marleen has set up the world's largest 3D printing service and marketplace for consumers. Marleen's expertise in digital manufacturing is now transferring to the apparel industry, minimizing overproduction and inventories and enabling customers to sell top-quality, sustainable, custom clothing, with no minimum order and 10-day delivery.
Atlantic Therapeutics develops medical devices and associated software, apps and technologies to treat incontinence. The company's mission is to improve the quality of life for millions of people, enabling them to restore and strengthen their pelvic health, regaining the confidence and control to lead an active life. The product, INNOVO, is an FDA approved CE marked treatment for women suffering from stress urinary incontinence. It works by delivering clinically proven, safe, non-invasive pelvic floor stimulation through unique wearable technology. The revolutionary tool helps prevent pelvic floor weakness by actively treating the cause rather than the symptoms. Results from clinical studies conducted on more than 600 subjects consistently confirm improvements in key outcomes, symptoms and acceptability.
Asperitas, originally from Haarlem, has developed and marketed a technology (based on liquid cooling) to enable data centers to function climate-independent and sustainable for even the most demanding users.
Sympower unlocks revenue streams by maximizing the value of flexibility in all energy markets and industries.
For more than ten years, IME Medical Electrospinning has been a leading player in the development and implementation of electrospinning processes and equipment for the manufacture of medical devices for (regenerative) medicine and drug delivery. IME Medical Electrospinning has developed a unique set of innovations in electrospin technology for the reproducible and scalable production of electrospun material under tightly controlled conditions required by the MedTech and Pharma markets. Under the leadership of Judith Heikoop, the Dutch deep-tech company is actively committed to growth and international expansion of co-development projects in, among others, the MedTech and Pharma industry.
Thanks to CPT's lightweight tank container, made of composites, logistics companies save significantly on transport costs. Due to the reduced weight, the same amount of liquid can be transported with fewer transport movements and, in addition to cost savings, transporters also realize a CO2 reduction.
As a developer and producer of innovative thermoelectric modules, RGS Development is one of the first parties that can efficiently and economically convert residual heat from high temperatures (700-1200 ° C) into electricity. With the patented casting technology, a breakthrough in the application of thermoelectric systems is within reach.
For more information: https://www.pdenh.nl/home/financieringen/
Sun Invest Noord-Holland is an initiative of solar energy developer Ecorus. The new company wants to make a significant contribution to the sustainable economy in the province of North Holland. To this end, it provides financing to housing corporations, companies and governments, so that these parties can purchase solar panels. The investment should ensure that Sun Invest can generate 20,000,000 kWh of solar energy annually, for approximately 10,000 households.
With B4Energy, lettuce specialist B-Four Agro wants to produce two million Nm3 of green gas every year for 1,400 North Holland households. To this end, the company from Warmenhuizen is building a bio-fermentation installation on its own site. Every year, the digester uses 16,000 tonnes of biomass as feed, which consists of vegetable residual flows from B-Four Agro itself and agricultural companies in the region. The green gas that is subsequently released is fed into the natural gas network and provides both households and B-Four Agro's cultivation systems with sustainable energy.
Wocozon's mission is to allow social tenants to take maximum advantage of solar energy, without having to invest in it themselves. To this end, the company rents out solar power installations to housing corporations. In this way they can make their real estate portfolio more sustainable in an accessible way and structurally reduce the housing costs of their tenants.
De Groene Aggregaat is committed to making the construction sector in North Holland more sustainable. To this end, the company builds tailor-made hybrid generators in-house. The initiator is Maru Systems, the installation company from De Rijp that specializes in sustainable energy solutions.
ChainCraft develops technologies that make sustainable biobased chemicals. They are alternatives to the non-sustainable raw materials used by the chemical, food and feed industry. The company is a spin-off from Wageningen University & Research and now has Amsterdam as its base.
De 7 Deugden works from a clear social mission. This is reflected, among other things, in offering work to people at a distance from the labor market. In addition to this social interpretation, the brewery also has explicit sustainability ambitions.
In the energy transition to the use of heat pumps as a replacement for the gas boiler, the consumer is confronted with the noise nuisance from the existing systems. Over the past eight years, Triple Solar has worked on an economical, efficient and silent system and has a worldwide patent on the heat pump panel. A heat pump panel combines a solar panel (electricity) with a thermal system so that the system supplies hot water for heating and tap water day and night, summer and winter.
The originally Amsterdam company The Next Closet gives designer clothes a second life on its own online marketplace and is said to contribute to circularity.
Volgroen is working on making the energy supply in the Netherlands and Europe increasingly consist of small-scale clean energy technologies. These technologies provide major energy-saving and cost benefits for the business community.
CoVadem has an inventive solution for improving efficiency in inland shipping and thus reducing CO2 emissions. By uniting up-to-date depth measurements from countless inland vessels in one up-to-date overview, every skipper has access to the most up-to-date navigation depth of the Dutch waterways.
An ethical and fair phone. That's Fairphone's product. That means sustainable materials, but also fair working conditions for the people who make your phone.
From the end of 2019, about 2,200 Zaanse households and various companies will have sustainable (residual) heat. About Zaanstad Heat Network This open heat network is installed on the growth. This means that both new customers and new (heat) suppliers can be connected at a later stage.
EST ‐ Floattech is one of the world's leading players in the field of marine battery and energy storage systems and with more than 50 projects completed they are number two worldwide.
MX3D is an Amsterdam-based company that can manufacture complex steel structures in a sustainable and cost-effective way using 3D printing technology. The robots that MX3D controls with its own software are aimed at printing metal objects in almost any size or shape, while also achieving significant material savings.
MUD Jeans produces sustainable jeans for which 40 percent of the raw material currently consists of recycled cotton. Thanks to an investment from PDENH, MUD Jeans wants to increase this to 100 percent in the short term.
Dexter Energy develops software for the management of energy networks, based on artificial intelligence. By predicting the use and load of the energy grid, they offer a unique service to energy companies and other major suppliers and consumers of the energy grid.
Thanks to CPT's lightweight tank container, made of composites, logistics companies save significantly on transport costs. Due to the reduced weight, the same amount of liquid can be transported with fewer transport movements and, in addition to cost savings, transporters also realize a CO2 reduction.
Frog Navigation Systems develops, manufactures and markets steering and control systems for freely moving, electronically controlled vehicles (AGV systems). AGV stands for Automatic Guiding Systems = self-steering systems).
The unique feature of the patented Frog systems is that they offer a solution that makes logistics and public transport much more flexible and can also be used outdoors. Because this AGV system also works well at high speeds, Frog makes it possible to optimize both transport systems and public transport systems. The application of these systems in vehicles for both passenger and freight transport makes an important contribution to reducing the aforementioned problems of mobility.
For more information: www.frog.nl
In September 2013, Frog Systems Holding BV was acquired by Oceaneering Holdings SARL
FiberCore Europe specializes in the design and production of load-bearing structures made of fiber-reinforced plastic (composite) for the construction and infrastructure sectors. The company supplies bridges, floating roads, balconies and noise barriers, among other things. FiberCore Europe has quickly realized a significant trend change in the otherwise traditional construction sector. This new trend of light, fast and sustainable construction is now being followed internationally.
Support structures made of fiber-reinforced plastic generate significant environmental benefits. Simply because these new constructions are twenty times lighter than concrete or steel, they cause about twenty times less CO2 emissions. In addition, the production process is low in energy and clean. Finally, as a residual material, composite is chemically inert. After the technical life, the total energy content and the fibers can be recovered.
FiberCore Europe has realized eight bridges made of fiber-reinforced plastic in the Netherlands alone. Just last year, the world's largest carbon bridge span was exhibited at the prestigious JEC in Paris. The company is based on a number of smart patents, automated engineering and an innovative production system. FiberCore Europe supplies products that can initially compete on cost price with traditional building materials such as steel and concrete. Due to the long lifespan and because the material is maintenance-free, the composite support structures are many times cheaper over the entire lifespan than comparable structures in steel and concrete. There too, FiberCore Europe is responding to the trend that infrastructure projects are increasingly being assessed on the total costs of ownership.
For more information: www.fibercore-europe.com
Visions Connected provides video communication as a user-friendly and ready-to-use service. Customers can use video communication for a fixed amount per month. In addition, Visions Connected develops and realizes custom video applications.
More and more organizations are using video communication for contacts with their customers, partners and suppliers. Video communication can also play a major role for mutual contacts between employees, whether or not at different locations. Video communication is changing the way companies operate and people work together. Developments are fast, there is more and more possible, regardless of the distances to be bridged: from private incidental video conferences between two or more locations - anywhere in the world - to public web video tools and from seamlessly integrated video facilities in existing business processes to platforms for interactive video solutions for mobile networks.
Video communication offers concrete benefits, such as higher efficiency and better returns in business processes. It saves travel time, promotes a faster exchange of knowledge (sources) and experience and increases the employability of experts.
For more information: www.visionsconnected.nl
Intivation, together with mobile phone manufacturers and network providers, makes it possible to make mobile communication accessible to 1.6 billion people who live in regions where a reliable electricity grid is not always a matter of course.
Intivation develops and markets innovative technology that increases the output of solar cells. This makes it possible to build solar cells into small electronic consumer products. Intivation works with some of the world's largest ODM manufacturers and has extensive experience in applying solar cells in portable electronics.
Intivation was founded in 2003 as True Solar Autonomy, after inventor Anne Osinga developed a new way to increase the output of voltages. The technology has been further developed and improved in recent years, so that the conversion from solar energy to electricity is now fast and efficient.
Intivation is ready to market the technology on a large scale and will focus on portable consumer electronics with solar cells, mainly mobile phones and chargers.
For more information: www.intivation.nl
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