Clean Industry Solutions Holding Europé: Annual Report 2020

Clean Industry Solutions Holding Europe AB publishes its Annual Report 2020.

Apart from the omnipresent pandemic, the major development for the holding was the acquisition of SolarSpring, a solution provider for industrial water treatment. More details on our activities are briefly summarized below.

Market and Sales
As Industrial Solar is providing its solutions internationally, the sales activities were influenced heavily by the pandemic as travel came to a pause and potential clients postponed invest-ments. We used this time to work on fostering the position in the domestic market, redefining our value proposition and shifting to virtual sales activies such as webinars. While the initial targets could not be met, the developments already beared fruits with a first project being secured and another project under development being enhanced. In 2020, Industrial Solar GmbH offered a total of 118 solutions to prospective clients with an aggregated turnover potential exceeding € 200m. At the same time we witnessed a strong growth in requests from multinational companies with ambitious decarbonization targets.
At the beginning of 2020, SolarSpring was able to pick up speed thanks to the acquisition by CISH. The sales resources of Industrial Solar were used to actively market membrane distillation. The first successes were achieved with sales to Abu Dhabi and the USA. SolarSpring's sales partners have also successfully sold the drinking water solution in Kenya, Congo and Colombia. The next step will be international marketing. The first concrete contacts have already been established.

Business Development and Partnerships

To optimize our sales process and to enhance the added value for our clients, we built up partnerships with other technology providers and investors. The  most important event in 2020 for the company, however, was the  acquisition of SolarSpring GmbH, which allow us to address two crucial issues for both humankind and sustainable industrial production: clean energy and clean water. SolarSpring, a spin-off of the largest solar research institute in Europe, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), was founded in 2009 and has evolved into an international pioneer in the field of membrane distillation, offering innovative waste- and drinking water treatment technology. Its technology is especially suitable for water treatment in industry and requires heat for its operation. Jointly, Industrial Solar and SolarSpring will offer sustainable energy and water treatment solutions to industry.

Technology
In 2020, Industrial Solar launched its remote monitoriong tool, enhancing the value proposition of our clients by easing plant supervision. In addition, the technical developments  mainly focused on standardization of plants periphery which will lower hardware costs and installation time for our projects.
SolarSpring has found a production method for the membrane distillation modules that makes it possible to produce almost 80% cheaper. At the same time, the new process gives more possibilities in the internal module design, which has a direct effect on the efficiency and thus on the profitability of the systems.

R&D

In 2020, Industrial Solar GmbH was granted two further R&D projects on national level and one more on European level. Both AuSeSol and SunBeltChiller are projects funded by the German government that will grant the company a total of € 240,000. AuSeSol ran for 6 months and aimed at the development of a strategy and a detailed project proposal for the integration Artificial Intelligence into solar thermal heating and power generation and introducing autonomous monitoring and operation. In the SunBeltChiller project, Innovative multi-stage solar thermal energy systems for cooling and process heat are to be developed.    
The Horizon 2020 project INNOWWIDE had a duration of 6 months and supported Industrial Solar GmbH with a funding of € 60,000. The purpose of the pilot call was to support highly innovative European SMEs to enter international markets, helping them to conduct Viability Assessment Projects in cooperation with stakeholders from target countries. 
For SolarSpring GmbH, three proposals for R&D projects funded by the German government were accepted. In the project BrineMine, SolarSpring and its partners are developing a process for the extraction of valuable materials and drinking water from geothermal souces in Chile.
The project AmmoniumMD aims at the energy efficient recovery of ammonia from municipal wastewater using membrane distillation, whereas in the project HaSiMem the focus is on the recovery of salt and water from stockpile leachate through a combined membrane distillation-crystallization process. The funding of all three projects for SolarSpring GmbH amounts to € 491,000 over the next three years.
 

By taking a look at all chapters of the report, you will receive a good overall description of our business, the potential and short-term outlook of our company.
The annual report 2020 is published today in English language.