Q&A: What is Oxi-Tech?

Oxi-Tech is a British start-up company with state-of-the-art disinfection technology; it’s powerful, super-clean, and very environmentally friendly.

What’s so special about this technology?

A: Well, it’s not only powerful and clean, but it’s also beautifully simple. We only need water and low voltage electricity to generate as much disinfectant as you require; you no longer need to get barrels of acid manufactured in mainland Europe, and delivered to your farm, nor do you have the hassle or cost of disposing of them. The planet bene ts from all the associated carbon savings from the chemicals’ production and transportation; it is a step-change and the future of disinfection.

How do you make disinfectant from water? It sounds biblical...

A: We create the most e ective disinfectant available. ‘Dissolved Ozone’ is oxygen by another name and has three oxygen atoms instead of two. It’s perfect for a disinfectant as it’s incredibly fast at oxidising.

This is achieved by splitting the water molecules, which are then reformed into triatomic oxygen (Dissolved Ozone). This is an incredibly powerful disinfectant and it works by physically attacking bacterial cell walls, unlike chlorine and other disinfectants that poison vital cell functions. Ozone physically destroys it, like a mini bolt of lightning at a cellular level. Unlike other disinfectants, no pathogen bacteria, etc can develop a resistance to ozone. It’s just a matter of concentration and time.

When disinfection has taken place, the triatomic molecule becomes diatomic as, in the air, we breathe, leaving no residues to accumulate in the soil, water, or on surfaces. It’s also safe and pH neutral so it can’t burn your skin or blind you, and any spillages simply revert to oxygen.

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Why dairy?

A: Well, to be honest, this is where we had an ideal opportunity to challenge and trial it. The technology has a huge range of global applications, everything from Legionella control, cleaning-inplace systems, water storage, aquaculture, pharmaceutical, and medical applications. Anything that needs disinfection, including water. With Oxi-Tech you no longer need to add harmful chemicals to the water to keep it safe and pathogen free.

Who is Oxi-Tech?

A: We are currently a very small team. Graham Axford is our chief executive and formally MD of an investment bank James Capel + co; Robert Misselbrook is our FD who is ex-Lehman Brothers and used to y helicopters in the army; Gerard Hickie, who was the general manager of L’Oreal in Korea; and Luke Rutterford with a background in forensics, who used to run the UK technical department for Rentokil Specialist Hygiene and Initial Medical.

We also work with consultants and contractors but are actively looking to grow the team.

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What are your achievements to date and what are you most proud of?

A: We’ve had three years of successful trials on a dairy farm, with very low bactoscan readings, and rates of contagious mastitis at an all-time low.

We received the UK runnerup position in the inaugural excellence award from the Agriepicenter, a site funded by the government to showcase and trial new agri-tech.

We’ve generated data at the National Bio lms Institute and other institutions demonstrating our technology is e ective against planktonic legionella and bio lms. Our technology gained the attention of Defra and it was included in the FETF 2022 grant scheme which was a real achievement. Having developed the technology over the last few years, we made our rst commercial sales in the UK and are actively selling in the Middle East through our distribution partner Reza Hygiene, where we are carrying out trials at some mega-farms and have had amazing results, reducing their bacterial levels by 75%, which are the lowest readings they have achieved. We are also actively working on a government-funded project for a robotic dairy with DeLaval at Harper Adams University.

What’s next for the business?

A: We are continuing with our innovation and patent IP program, learning from our development farms and moving forward into some other key applications which is very exciting indeed, particularly as there are global opportunities that are presenting themselves.