Customers are lining up for the million-dollar idea called Nautic Waterloo – the small wastewater purifier designed for use on board ships. Co-founder Dr. Doekle Yntema discusses the success of the young startup, and the assistance provided by NEW-ttt. The company is ready to roll out the product, and customers are eager, with NEW-ttt helping to fine-tune the final details.
It seemed like an ordinary Friday afternoon in 2021, but during what appeared to be a philosophical brainstorming session, Albert Bosma – a financial expert, Doekle Yntema – an electrical engineer, and Marco de Graaff – a microbiologist, laid the foundation for an innovative company: Nautic Waterloo. As the owner of a rental fleet, Albert was already acutely aware that new regulations were about to be enforced. Formally, the discharge of toilet water, or black water, from ships was already prohibited, but now enforcement was to be tightened. And rightly so, as we must also be watchful with the freshwater we use. This additional regulatory push motivated Albert and his electronical engineering-skilled partner Doekle to improve water quality themselves and seize the market opportunity. They also needed an expert in purification – Marco. The Frisian trio, all working at Wetsus, made good use of their free time over the past few years and are now amid their NEW-ttt validation test.
The reason illegal discharge is so common is that it’s currently not so easy to discharge your toilet water while on the water. “We wanted to build an automatic and as foolproof as possible purification system that could be fitted on all kinds of existing pleasure boats and houseboats. And it shouldn’t be complicated or expensive. There are other startups that try using various disinfecting chemicals or UV light, but we only use waste engine heat or electricity,” says Yntema.
And making sure the system works is one thing, but to sell it, you also need a certificate which isn’t easy to obtain. “The requirements for the certificate are very strict. Fortunately, the previously unfeasible requirements have since been adjusted and made fairer.”
And such tests also provide new insights. “We saw that under the specific conditions required by the certification test, some bacterial growth still occurred. So, we needed to develop further, and we received help from NEW-ttt for that.”
They were assigned a spot in the Water Application Center (WAC) and received help from a few students to continue innovating. Yntema: “It had to be as simple as possible. It’s a stainless-steel box with some tubes and pumps, and we didn’t want to make it complicated.” Therefore, we had to cleverly reuse the available components to further solidify the design of the system. And it worked. “The students gave us a new perspective, a different view.”
Now, the first prototypes have already been installed in boats. But the purifiers aren’t finished yet. “There’s still room for improvement,” says Yntema, “we can get more out of the tests in the WAC, and that’s what we’re going to do. It’s also incredibly fun to keep innovating. We hope not only to create a great product but also to contribute something to the science in this sector.”
Meanwhile, the company continues to grow. They now have a team of six, and paying customers are lining up, and the line keeps getting longer.
Interested to become successful too?
Please contact Ronald Wielinga our manager entrepreneurship via +31 6 121 38 876 or r.wielinga@watercampus.nl or read more below.
