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Climate Change Capital Private Equity leads €8m investment alongside Oraxys in French industrial wastewater treatment company Orège
London, 12 July, 2011
Climate Change Capital Private Equity LP ("CPE") has led an €8m
investment in Orège SA ("Orège"), a French company that has
developed patented wastewater treatment technologies for complex
effluents and sludge from the oil & gas, mining, petrochemical
and chemical industries.
CPE, which manages a €200m private equity fund focused on
expansion capital and buy-out transactions in European cleantech
companies, contributed €6m of the €8m round, alongside Oraxys SA
("Oraxys"), the Luxembourg-based cleantech private equity
firm.
Orège's patented SOFHYS [1] and patent pending SLG [2] are
advanced wastewater treatment solutions that are capable of
treating complex industrial effluents (in particular BTEX [3] and
dissolved COD [4]) and de-watering and/or de-polluting sludge in a
highly cost efficient manner (de-watering percentage doubled
compared to traditional techniques).
Pascal Gendrot, Orège's Chief Executive Officer said: "Orège is
delighted to welcome blue-chip international investors CPE and
Oraxys among its shareholders. This is a key milestone in Orège's
development: we have substantial capital to build on our commercial
successes and to accelerate the expansion of Orège in France and
internationally through investments into our own fleet of mobile
SOFHYS and SLG units and to enrich our specific know-how with
dedicated teams in the fields of oil & gas and chemistry. Our
new investors will also provide valuable industrial connections to
support our growth."
Alex Betts, a Partner of CPE said: "Orège has developed truly
unique breakthrough wastewater treatment technologies in terms of
performance, physical footprint, cost and environmental impact for
treating highly complex industrial effluents and de-polluting the
most toxic sludge. We are looking forward to supporting Pascal and
his team's expansion plans."
François Guinot, a Partner of Oraxys and former Chairman and CEO
of Rhône-Poulenc Chemistry and former CEO of bioMérieux, further
commented: "A number of companies are involved in wastewater
treatment but Orège stands out from the others by being able to
provide highly reliable solutions as a result of an original
combination of technologies."
Bryan, Garnier & Co acted as exclusive financial advisor to
Orège.
- END -
[1] See Notes to Editors
[2] Ibid
[3] BTEX is an acronym that stands for benzene, toluene,
ethylbenzene, and xylenes. These compounds are some of the organic
compounds found in petroleum derivatives such as petrol. Benzene,
toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes have harmful effects on the
central nervous system.
[4] Chemical oxygen demand (COD) - a measure of the amount
of organic compounds in water.
ENQUIRIES:
Climate Change Capital Ltd
Daniel Cremin +44 20 7939 5319 dcremin@c-c-capital.com
Nicolas Moiseeff +44 20 7939 5170 nmoiseeff@c-c-capital.com
NOTES TO EDITORS:
About Orège SA
Orège SA is an integrated wastewater treatment solution provider.
Its customer offering includes definition and tuning of the
treatment protocol, industrial design of the processing line,
integrated design office capability and project management offering
high value-added services with subcontractors and local regulatory
bodies. Orège's offer is primarily focused on industrial firms in
the oil & gas, mining, petrochemical and chemical
industries.
Orège has 40 employees and is based in Jouy-en-Josas, near Paris,
and has an R&D facility in Aix-en-Provence. Orège has now filed
four patents relating to its two key technologies:
1. SOFHYS® technology: for the treatment of industrial effluents.
SOFHYS is a patented reactor combining an advanced oxidation
process using Boron-Doped Diamond Electrodes with hydrodynamic
functionalities. It is able to treat all types of dissolved
non-biodegradable pollutants including traditionally difficult to
treat molecules such as hydrocarbons, BTEX, amines and organosulfur
compounds. Good biodegradability can be achieved by breaking down
long organic chains (generally toxic for the environment) into
smaller easily biodegradable chains. SOFHYS units are able to treat
highly charged effluents, up to 300 g/L in COD, and can achieve a
reduction in COD of 99%. The SOFHYS technology is also able to
treat micro-pollutants and, as such, fulfils the future
requirements in terms of regulation for Priority Substances.
2. SLG technology: for the de-watering, treatment and de-pollution
of industrial and municipal sludge. SLG is a physico-chemical
system able to separate physical phases: solid, liquid and gas at
standard pressures and temperatures. It can be used on a wide range
of different industrial sludge, sediments and colloidal
wastewaters. The SLG technology is able to de-water sludge by
breaking colloids, so decreasing the volume of sludge to be
disposed of by a factor of 2 to 3. It is also able to de-pollute
toxic sludge such as those containing hydrocarbons or metals. The
SLG reactor has an extremely low consumption of energy and
reactants compared to traditional de-watering technologies.
The resulting water from the treatment process can typically be
reused for industrial purposes or released back into the natural
environment.
For more information, please visit: www.orege.com

