12 July 2011

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.

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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

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