Launched500: What we learned from profiling 500 mining technology companies
500 companies. 30+ countries. Two years of weekly profiles. When we started Launched, the idea was simple: feature 5 mining
Read articleFor the past two years, Unearthed’s Launched feature has put emerging innovators on the radar of the mining and resources sector.
Delivered as a lightweight weekly list, Launched highlights the capability, location and potential industry relevance of startups developing new technologies, products and solutions around the world.
As Launched passes its 100 week milestone, the feature has now showcased more than 500 emerging startups, scaleups and disruptive innovations.
To mark the occasion, we have reconnected with several companies featured during its earliest weeks. This series explores how their technologies, teams and market opportunities have evolved over the past two years, and what they have learned while working to turn emerging capabilities into embedded heavy industry solutions.
RemePhy
Located: Harpenden, United Kingdom, with laboratory operations based at Rothamsted Research.
Founding team:
- Sarah McMullen: Chief Executive Officer
- Dr Franklin Keck: Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
- Dr Ion Ioannou: Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
RemePhy was founded around research developed at Imperial College London by Franklin Keck and Ion Ioannou, in collaboration with Professors Karen Polizzi, Jason Hallett and Paul Fennell. The business has also been supported by deep technology venture builder Cambridge Future Tech.
Funding and support since July 2024:
RemePhy reports closing a pre seed funding round backed by SFC Capital and an angel syndicate, alongside innovation grant support from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
The funding is supporting its first field programme, continued development of its biological platform and expansion of the company’s research team.
Current development stage:
RemePhy has progressed from controlled glasshouse testing into a field ready development programme, with its first UK field trial on metal contaminated land scheduled to commence in the coming weeks.
Accelerator and venture programmes:
- Cambridge Future Tech portfolio company
- Creative Destruction Lab Minerals, 2025-26 cohort
RemePhy participated in CDL’s dedicated Minerals stream, which supports science and technology companies developing capabilities relevant to mining, mineral processing and associated environmental challenges.
Why RemePhy first caught our attention
RemePhy first came onto Unearthed’s radar during market research undertaken for a soil-focused innovation challenge with South32.
The company stood out because it was approaching a familiar mining challenge from outside the industry’s traditional technology ecosystem.
Heavy metal soil contamination and the management of legacy mining land are established problems, but the available responses can be time consuming and fully remove the problem material. RemePhy was instead exploring whether a carefully selected combination of plants and microbes could accelerate the natural removal of metals from contaminated soils.
The underlying technology was developed at Imperial College London and uses the symbiotic relationship between plants and soil bacteria to increase metal uptake. Imperial has reported that the approach achieved up to 17 times greater extraction than conventional phytoremediation methods during its earlier research and development.
The plants can then be harvested, removing accumulated contaminants from the site while creating a potential pathway to recover metals including nickel, cobalt, magnesium and manganese from the resulting biomass.
Following the initial research, Unearthed team member Jake Harris provided RemePhy with pro-bono advice on its mining market approach, positioning and pathways to industry engagement.
The work helped RemePhy better understand how its capability could be communicated to mining companies, but it was equally valuable from Unearthed’s perspective. Supporting the company gave Jake a clearer understanding of the challenges faced by science led innovators entering the mining sector.
RemePhy’s subsequent participation with Cambridge Future Tech and CDL Minerals provided further venture building and industry exposure as the team worked to move its technology from research into a deployable environmental remediation platform. Cambridge Future Tech has supported the translation of the underlying science into a commercial venture, while CDL describes RemePhy as developing proprietary plant bacterial modules for the accelerated removal of heavy metals from contaminated land.
When RemePhy first appeared on our radar, the company was establishing its technical proposition and exploring how its biological approach could address mining-related soil contamination.
Two years later, it closed its pre seed round, expanded its leadership team, established operations at Rothamsted Research and prepared to move from controlled glasshouse results into its first field deployment.
Two years on: catching up with RemePhy
We caught up with the RemePhy team to learn more about its journey over the past two years, the changes it is seeing across the remediation and critical minerals markets, and what comes next for the business.
What are the biggest milestones you’ve achieved over the past two years?
The biggest step has been moving from glasshouse proof of concept to a field ready programme, with our first UK field trial on metal-contaminated land starting in the coming weeks.
Alongside that, we closed our pre seed round, backed by SFC Capital, an angel syndicate and BBSRC, which is funding the field programme and our platform development.
We are also growing the team and are in the final stages of hiring a Head of Research to lead the next phase of the science.
What have you observed changing in the market over that period?
Two things stand out.
Security of critical mineral supply has moved up the agenda for governments and industry, which has raised interest in recovering metals from sources that were previously written off as waste or contamination.
We have also seen more openness to biological and nature-based approaches to remediation, where a few years ago the default was either excavation and disposal or simply leaving legacy sites to sit polluted and undeveloped.
What do the next two years look like for your business?
We expect to move from our first field trial to multiple sites, using the early results to refine which plant and microbe combinations work best across different contamination profiles.
We also want to expand our plant and bacterial library and screen more combinations against a wider range of metal pollutants and environments.
Alongside that, we are extending the platform towards metal recovery from the harvested biomass so the process creates value rather than only cleaning up, while building the partnerships and funding to support first commercial deployments.
Connecting mining with emerging innovation
Unearthed Solutions works at the intersection of industry need and emerging innovation, helping mining and resources companies look beyond familiar suppliers and technology stacks to identify new approaches to complex operational challenges.
Through features like Launched, market research and open innovation programmes, Unearthed helps promising innovators gain industry visibility while supporting mining organisations to discover capabilities with the potential to create meaningful operational and environmental impact.
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Building a technology for the resources sector, or looking for new solutions to an industry challenge?
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