Interview: Markos Papadopoulos CEO, Z2O Limited
1- Z2O is what we call a new innovative SME. Can you tell us more about your company?
Z2O was born from the result of 30 years of research in the area of
naturally occurring bacteria and their effect on the environment we live
in. The technology behind the bacterial processes is over 4.5 Billion
years old. However the understanding of how Bacteria work has only just
now started to be understood by scientists. Over the years the inventors
of the products of Z2O have developed these products by focusing on the
workings of certain mother strains of bacteria and their effects on
mainly bioremediation and soil healing. Our products do not contain any
genetically modified material, or chemicals which damage the
environment.
2- You cover several important sector such as nutrition, remediation, and clean tech, could you elaborate?
Our company’s activities and products development are focused around
three main sectors of commercial activities: Energy, Food, and Food
Security. Food Security is at the centre of our strategy for the future
and I will elaborate on this in due course.
Our involvement in the energy sector is threefold:
a. On the one hand we address the bioremediation of soils and
water bodies contaminated by the Oil & Gas activities, and other
activities involving the use of Hydrocarbons, and
b. on the other we address Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) through
microbial processes (MEOR). Nowadays no more than 30% of the proven
reserves can be recovered. The Microbial technology we offer can
increase this recovery to close to 70% and even 100%. This will reduce
automatically the continuous demand on new land and offshore areas to be
explored for Oil & Gas and will release it as arable land and
protect any bodies of water from further exploration.
c. Finally, our waste water treatment products are able to
degrade the cellulose in wood waste and food waste in mono or
bi-saccharides, which in turn are the perfect feedstock for the
production of biofuels. Cellulose from wood waste is vastly unused at
the moment and we are having to turn to easier feedstock like food
commodities to produce our bio-fuels. This combined action is destined
to regenerate contaminated soils into arable lands available, and to
increase significantly the recovery of proven Oil & Gas reserves
that cannot be recovered with the available technologies, whether
chemical, or mechanical. Finally the development of our products for
degrading cellulose are releasing the food commodities to our food chain
and will no longer be able to influence the ever rising prices of these
commodities.
In the Food sector our intervention is mainly in agriculture and aquaculture.
a. In Agriculture our products are formulated to treat arable
land that has been degraded by decades of use of chemical fertilisers,
and regenerate this soil so that production with much higher yields can
be resumed. We have experienced up to 45% in yield increases on average
and in some soils the yield increase reached up to 60%. The treatment of
these soils has also significantly reduced, and even eliminated ground
and surface water contamination. We also intervene at the level of
cattle where we offer microbial products that are added to the feed or
drink of cattle and improve the food assimilation of the cattle
resulting in higher weights in less time. We have witnessed up to 30%
increased weights in cattle using our products with a 20% time reduction
on their growth.
b. In aquaculture, our products are achieving some spectacular
results in brackish as well as sea water. The main aim of these products
is to eliminate any harmful bacteria in the water of the marine animals
by competitive exclusion, which at the same will increase exponential
their ability to resist any viral infection. Using a variety of our
products, we have been able to reduce post-larval mortality in a high
intensity brackish water shrimp farm from 95% on average to less than
5%. At the same time, the weights of individual shrimps by 35% on
average. In open ocean and despite the outside factors the increase in
yield was around 45%, the mortality reduced to under 20%. In both cases
the full cycle from post-larval to harvest was reduced from 24 to 20
weeks. These results can be expect to reflect in all other types of
aquaculture such as Fish, oyster, mussels, farming and the likes.
c- Food Security is at the centre of our strategy: This is our
vision, our statement of faith. Food security is not only providing food
for everybody but more importantly providing accessibility to food for
everybody. That includes providing the accessibility with affordable
means to everybody. The resources for food production are becoming
scarcer by the day due to industrial, mining and energy activities
putting increasing pressure on the food resources. Although the problems
of food security are enormous, they are not impossible to resolve: let
us take the example of a small community of say 1,00 people in a lost
corner of Africa: They have no immediate access to food due to their
degraded arable land, often contaminated by industrial or exploration
activities, who have to travel several miles a day for access to water
and food or depend on hand-outs for their food: International
organisations are increasingly working on shoe-string budgets. Most of
the time the food cannot even reach these communities for various
reasons including robbery, war lords activities and other natural
reasons. We can intervene and regenerate the soil for agriculture,
secure clean water for irrigation and cattle, growing and to create an
aquaculture accessible to all in the village. Utopia? Not at all. This
could be achieved in less than 12 months, and the larger the community
the bigger the operations. The people within that community will have
had secured access to food, the running of the operations requires very
little technology, and the supply is secured with minimal influence of
outside factors. Why nobody had thought of that before? Everybody had
thought of that as the ideal solution: but the technology was not
available: these project cannot be achieved with chemical fertilisers
and aquaculture with sometimes 100% mortality.
3- It’s interesting the way you address these issues! What are the main driver of your activity?
As stated the main driver of our activity is Food Security. One
important element of Food Security in of course the Biomarine
environment. We have been witnessing over the past couple of years an
increased interest in our products not only from producers of marine and
water based food, but also from the polluters of the marine environment
( “the bad guys so to speak”) to embrace the solutions we offer through
our products. Food producers are looking to increase their yields and
therefore their revenues, and reduce their dependence on state aid, and
polluters are looking to minimize their risk exposure to back breaking
penalties, by working to be compliant with environmental regulations. In
all areas there is an increased awareness of the environment and the
need to protect it, some are more urgent than others, but all tend to
achieve the ultimate purpose, which is a healthy Industrial and Energy
activity that is environmentally friendly, and a better supply and
access to food for all.
4- Could you give us some example of contract you are working on?
The Bioremediation Industry, and the Oil Industry have proven to be
the industries that are urgently looking for solutions to bio-remediate
the effects of their activities in many areas, and at the same time
looking to increase the amount of oil they can recover from their proven
reserves in order to maximise shareholders return on investment. We are
currently negotiating contracts with major, and less major oil
companies for cleaning up Oil storage tanks from their residues,
treating oil going through pipelines to secure a better and seamless
flow of the Oil, and treating wells and oil reservoirs to secure higher
oil recovery from the proven reserves. We are also negotiating contracts
in Africa, South America, and the Middle East to secure the
bio-remediation of vast lands contaminated with very high levels of
hydrocarbons.
Concurrently, we are investing a lot of effort in trials with the
commodities producers such as wheat, soya, corn, and the likes that have
allowed us to start negotiating with major commodities traders who have
secured farming land to support their trading activities.
Finally we are supplying shrimp farmers in the US and South America
with products that have made a big difference in their operations,
whether qualitatively, quantitatively or financially.
5- This is your first participation in BioMarine, why are you interested by this growing sector?
Biomarine, together with agriculture, is at the heart of Food
Security as we have discussed in previous questions. Z2O alone cannot go
far in promoting its strategy, and we need all the assistance we can
get in order to achieve our goals. Our participation in Biomarine 2012
will go a long way in creating for us a consistent network that will
help us achieve our goals in growing the sector, and at the same time
benefit all our partners in Biomarine.
6- You are the industry partner of the marine biotech for environment think tank. What are your expectations?
Let me first say that Z2O is proud to be part of Biomarine 2012 and
the think tank that identifies best with our activities. We see this
participation as the stepping stone for building up a network of people
with similar goals, and in the longer term to be able, with Biomarine to
put forward innovative policies, to governments and International
organisations, that will result in eliminating in the long run the need
for subsidies in all food industries (policies that most countries can
hardly afford nowadays) and at the same time secure a better
environment.
