The problem they’re tackling
In a world where environmental and consumer pressures are shifting industries towards sustainable products, there’s an opportunity for technology to make chemical processes greener and circular, whilst maintaining product quality. This is where Nanomox, comes in.
“We want to produce better materials in a more sustainable way,” said Francisco Malaret, CEO and Co-Founder of Nanomox. “This means two things. First, carbon intensity, so we want to make our material compatible with the net zero future that we're trying to build; second, circularity, which means making our materials from waste streams and secondary sources.”
All with the goal of “diverting millions of tonnes of material going into landfill and upcycling critical metals.”
The technology they’re developing
To this end, Nanomox are creating “inorganic materials—like metal oxides, metal carbonates, metal hydroxides—through a wet chemical process.” This process uses ionic liquids to create products with unique compositions and the benefit that “compared to the mineral acids, which don't discriminate and will dissolve everything. Ionic liquids improve the economics and environmental credentials because we can lower the chemical consumption and theey can be recycled back into the process.” It also has the benefit of producing hydrogen as a by-product, which they could utilise or sell on.
“There was an article by a hydrometallurgy expert, which said ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents are not the way for extractive hydrometallurgy and using language that it is impossible. But the chemical space is huge; they didn't find the right ionic liquid, that doesn't mean that it is impossible! We ‘re doing it now!”
At the moment, they’re focussing on zinc oxide, which has uses in cosmetics, tyres, ceramics, glass and electronics. “Through our process, we can modify the crystal structure of zinc oxide to enhance the performance in the end-products.”
Initially, they want to focus on cosmetics and sun protection. “Chemical sunscreens permeate through the skin,” said Francisco, “and studies have found all of those chemicals in the bloodstream after 24 hours of application, and there are concerns this will disrupt the endocrine system, cause fertility issues, and so on.” Francisco clarifies that sun protection is a necessity and health experts recommend
protecting the skin from harmful solar radiation to reduce the risk of skin cancer, whether this is through chemical or mineral sunscreen, but there is a desire to move towards physical blockers, like zinc oxide. However, these leave an undesirable white tint on the skin. Through their unique morphological control, Nanomox have been able to achieve unprecedented transparency that could go a long way to solving this issue.
“We are outperforming main players in our initial beach-head strategy. Our small team has managed to create a zinc oxide that is more transparent than anything these large chemical companies are doing, which is very exciting for us!”
The impact
Not only are they able to create unique products to target unmet needs, but they’re also able to make the process more sustainable in two ways. Through enabling a transition from pyrometallurgical to hydrometallurgical processes that operate at lower temperatures, they can reduce emissions. They can also use waste streams, such as electric arc furnace (EAF) dust produced by the steel industry.
Currently, due to this waste containing zinc, this material cannot be recycled and goes to landfill. As 28% of global steel is produced through these EAF technologies, “At a global scale, we're producing around 16 million tonnes of that material, which contains 2.8 million tonnes of zinc and is worth $9 billion. Then we're just throwing that away.”
Whilst some processes can recycle this zinc, they use a pyrometallurgical process that hinders efforts to decarbonise. With an expected significant rise in electric arc furnace use, reaching 50% in global steel production by 2050, there is a need to use this waste.
“Our process can extract zinc selectively and convert it into these exotic nano-range crystals… this can mitigate 16,000,000 tonnes of waste annually. And that's on a continuous basis, we have mountains of legacy waste.”
And this is just an initial focus. As a start-up trying to get to revenue generation, they acknowledge that they can’t do everything now, but after zinc oxide and its applications in cosmetics, they will be able to widen the sectors and applications targeted with zinc oxide, as well as explore new materials.
The journey and challenges so far
With a background in chemistry and chemical engineering, Francisco completed his masters in oil refining and worked in chemical engineering before moving to London to complete a PhD at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College.
During his PhD studying the use of ionic solvents to produce biofuels, “we discovered by accident that we could make these inorganic materials using the same fluids. My background is not materials sciences, and I had never worked with inorganic materials, so I didn’t know the significance of that.”
However, after starting with zinc oxide and finding out “that we’re burning metallic zinc, producing a lot of CO2, and making low quality materials”, Francisco continued to investigate and came to the point of spinning out in 2020. After COVID hit, they were delayed by two years but have since gone from strength to strength. They raised a pre-seed round in January 2023 that allowed them to expand their team and validate their technology at the lab scale.
Over the past 1.5 years, they have been raising a seed round to transition to a more commercial phase and build a large pilot plant. “We were quite lucky because we are under the umbrella of Imperial, so right now our labs are in the Imperial Incubator at Scale Space in White City. They have wet chemical labs to rent, so it's quite convenient because you don't need to deal with anything.”
They are now eyeing potential warehouse space in London (Victoria Industrial Estate) to develop their pilot plant, which could then be repurposed for other materials as they graduate their zinc oxide production into a full commercial scale plant.
They acknowledge that equity funding is one of the greatest challenges, particularly in the current economic climate.
Francisco is "extremely grateful to the UK’s innovation funding agency, Innovate UK, whose support enabled the maturation of the technology and without which Nanomox would not exist." He also acknowledges that whilst they were lucky with grant funding, due to the versality of their technology, there were limitations due to a trend towards more specific goals or regional funds. This meant that often there was a need to pivot their research to fit, which slowed their progress in their beachhead market, and generally the funds were not enough for everything they wanted to achieve and came with a lot of restrictions. However, this diversity of grant topics has enabled them to further mature their core ionic liquid–based technology and demonstrate the versatility of the platform beyond zinc and zinc oxide, extending into magnesium-based materials (magnesium oxide and hydroxides) and rare earth elements. This has accelerated time-to-market in these future verticals and generated robust data to support growing interest from industrial partners and investors.
“The good thing is that we are a platform technology, and we can make a lot of materials. We are net zero and we are circular economy, so we can squeeze our technology into a lot of grants … but the situation is not ideal.”
In his mind, more funding mechanisms are needed to factor in the high capital needs of these companies, the longer development times, and the high-risk due to the nature of R&D. Nanomox is considering innovation loans as their low interest rates can mean long-term savings.
The support from Change Makers
Nanomox joined Change Makers in 2025, and one of the things that benefitted them most was the chemistry focus of the support, from the specialised nature of the masterclasses to surrounding themselves with others on a similar journey.
“I have done a few accelerators, and the topics are more or less the same, and you're sitting next to someone developing a software, and it's similar but it's not the same… in our cohort, there’s a lot of synergies."
"The Change Makers programme is different; it's tailored to translating chemistry-based technologies into commercial realities, so every session is immediately applicable. Within the cohort, participants share similar challenges, and there are opportunities to work closely. As we're developing materials, we're not developing products, we have opportunities to work with peers who are - for example - developing bioplastics, we can provide zinc oxide to improve the barrier properties, and so on."
They have also been able to access the experience brought by the Change Makers Venture Mentors, ranging from how to build a team and board to how to develop relationships with investors, handle IP, and manage customer projects. The mentors, Dr Jon-Paul Griffiths (founder and CTO of OXECO) and Dr Haydn Jones (expert in IP strategy) have even been able to support them in developing their customer value proposition and their market focus, helping them decide whether to target cosmetics or tyres first.
Now that their round is complete, we wish them success bringing products to market and delivering first revenues.