EIT RawMaterials-supported startup Catalyco is turning industrial waste into high-value zinc oxide
EIT RawMaterials-supported startup Catalyco is turning industrial waste into high-value zinc oxide
Latvian startup Catalyco has received €90,000 from EIT RawMaterials to scale its low-emission technology, which transforms industrial waste into high-purity zinc oxide for global industries.
Zinc oxide (ZnO) through a microscope. Copyright: Catalyco
Location: Riga, Latvia
Supported by: EIT RawMaterials Accelerator Programme and EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) for Innovation Projects
Catalyco, a Latvian start-up, has received €90,000 in equity investment from EIT RawMaterials to transform industrial side streams into high-purity zinc oxide (ZnO). The recovered, high-quality and sustainable ZnO is used in catalysts and absorbents, with broad applications across the chemical, cosmetics, rubber, and tire industries.
Traditionally, recovering ZnO from industrial residues has been both complex and costly. Catalyco’s innovative process changes that. The company has developed a low-emission, cost-efficient recovery technology that extracts zinc and other valuable metals from industrial by-products through a thermal, multi-step precipitation process, enabling the efficient recovery of high-purity materials.
“The support from EIT RawMaterials helped us advance from laboratory research toward pilot-scale readiness and enabled us to further develop and optimise our zinc oxide recovery process, produce high-quality samples for industrial testing, and validate the commercial potential of our technology,” said Reinis Spunde, CEO of Catalyco. “It also helped us strengthen our business model, engage with potential customers, and prepare the groundwork for the next phase of pilot implementation.”
Impact highlights
- Catalyco provides a sustainable, low-emission process to recover materials such as ZnO from waste, with significantly lower environmental impact than conventional methods.
- Water savings: potential reduction of more than 600,000 m³ per year
- CO₂ reduction: potential to significantly reduce emissions through circular production
- Waste reduction: over 230,000 tonnes of waste prevented each year
Next steps
Catalyco is currently running eight new material-recovery tests as part of a consortium to build the technical and analytical foundation for scaling its process toward a pilot plant. This is supported by the EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) for Innovation Projects.
