EcoSPEARS, which spent time at UCF’s business incubation program and now employs 11 at its 6,400-square-foot headquarters in Altamonte Springs, will participate in the Port’s Blue Economy Incubator Program.
The two-year remediation project in San Diego Bay is the latest good news for ecoSPEARS, which in February announced that it had raised $2 million in investments.
The company landed a license to NASA technology that injects absorbent, sponge-like spikes that are placed in contaminated waters.
It allows the collection of toxic contaminants from water.
The Blue Economy Incubator “gives us a great partnership in an area that is usually tough to enter,” said Ian Doromal, executive vice president of ecoSPEARS. “But once you’re there, it gives you that approval and you are looked at in a different way. It allows us to prove the pilot.”
EcoSPEARS has primarily done its work in Florida.
Landing a project in California helps make the company a national one, Doromal said.
“It’s important to gain business here but, as a startup, you have to go where the business is and where the interest is,” he said.
President and CEO Serge Albino said the California deal could eventually lead to more work on the Pacific coast, as the company works toward eventually establishing a second headquarters there.
“They are much more progressive there when it comes to cleantech,” he said.
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