Novalith

How many Founders has your company got? How did you meet?

3 Founders, Steven Vassiloudis as Founder & CEO, Dr Andrew Harris as Co-founder & CTO & Christiaan Jordaan as Co-founder & CBDO. Steven met Andrew whilst studying chemical engineering at the University of Sydney (he was his lecturer for Green Engineering) and since graduating, they collaborated on several novel technology projects together. Given Andrew’s expertise in the field and their work history, he was a perfect fit as a Co-founder & CTO! Christiaan and Steven met more recently through his company (Sicona Battery Technologies, where they were helping with the engineering and development of their pilot plant). After many conversations about the battery & materials industry and how they should (and could!) be doing things better, the very exciting Novalith technology (capturing CO2 to make a lithium battery chemical) caught his interest and he jumped on board as Co-founder & CBDO.

Steven Vassiloudis

Founder & CEO, Novalith

Steven Vassiloudis is an experienced chemical engineer who specialises in process scale up and commercialisation of novel technologies. In his role as director for Kemplant, he has worked with companies in multiple industries to solve engineering problems, whilst maintaining a passion for clean technology and sustainability. He has assisted several clean tech startups to develop and scale their technologies, where he maintains a close relationship with other founders.

What impact is your company hoping to make on the world?

We want to make lithium sustainable & green and help realise our electric future by providing a better, cheaper, cleaner & faster way to produce bulk battery grade lithium chemicals.

What (and whose) problem is your company trying to solve?

There are a few important issues we’re looking to solve with Novalith’s technology. The first is that the demand for lithium is rapidly increasing and is expected to overtake supply by 2023. The second is that the current lithium chemicals production methods are complex and have high capital & operating costs, require substantial infrastructure, and due to the chemical reagents required, are environmentally harmful, and are slow to deploy (and will likely be unable to meet that demand). Novalith’s technology overcomes this by simplifying the process and use CO2 to direct produce lithium chemicals; the technology is rapidly scalable (able to meet the demand) and due to the simplicity of the flowsheet, is able to produce lithium chemicals at a significantly reduced costs whilst sequestering CO2 and producing no harmful bulk products.