Menu Product Biofouling Stories I-Tech Eco-Innovation Board News Team Contact SELEKTOPE® ENTERS ANTIFOULING MAINSTREAM After a 16-year jour­ney the first branded marine coat­ings fea­tur­ing Selek­tope® have finally been launched. ”We are hon­ored,” says Philip Chabaane, Chief Exec­u­tive I-Tech. Read more Product Rethinking | Power | Paint Makers | Ship Owners | Performance | Approval | Safety Data Selek­tope intro­duces for the first time ever a phar­ma­co­log­i­cal mode of action to com­bat bar­na­cle set­tle­ment. By tem­porar­ily stim­u­lat­ing the octopamine recep­tor in the bar­na­cle lar­vae, caus­ing their legs to start kick­ing, the organ­isms are repelled from the hull. These ground­break­ing dis­cov­er­ies enable unri­valled power at minute con­cen­tra­tions, yet within the lim­its of the most rig­or­ous risk assess­ment bod­ies in the indus­try. Selek­tope is an organic, non-metal com­pound with effi­cacy proven at 0.1% w/w. POWER TO PERFORM POWER TO SUSTAIN The ship­ping indus­try spends over USD 200 bil­lion on fuel each year, rep­re­sent­ing the lion part of oper­a­tional costs for the ship­ping com­mu­nity. Enhanced reg­u­la­tion on emis­sions to air will fur­ther increase fuel costs, as higher fuel grades will be required. Selek­tope is an approved selec­tive antifoul­ing agent that pro­tects ship hulls from bar­na­cles and the drag they cause, which can lead to sig­nif­i­cant fuel sav­ings of more than 10 per­cent. Selek­tope deliv­ers power at only a few grams per liter paint, leav­ing room for inno­va­tion at a paint maker level and opti­miz­ing hull per­for­mance while sharply reduc­ing bio­cide load­ings. BENEFITS FOR PAINT MAKERS Improves sta­tic per­for­mance across the range of antifoul­ing tech­nolo­gies Com­pli­ant with reg­u­la­tory author­i­ties for com­mer­cial ves­sels and leisure boats Enables reduced bio­cide load­ings Improved for­mu­la­tion flex­i­bil­ity Pow­er­ful enough to replace cop­per, flex­i­ble enough to boost Cu-based for­mu­la­tions BENEFITS FOR SHIP OWNERS Reduced foul­ing and improved fuel sav­ing Extended sta­tic per­for­mance Reduced need for hard scrub­bing through excel­lent per­for­mance against bar­na­cle induced foul­ing Reduced risk of trans­port­ing inva­sive aquatic species Improved envi­ron­men­tal pro­file by reduc­ing bio­cide load­ings in antifoul­ing for­mu­la­tions PERFORMANCE TEST The hull of a ves­sel can become heav­ily fouled with both macro and micro foul­ing, caus­ing sig­nif­i­cantly increased fuel con­sump­tion when mov­ing. Tests show that using pow­er­ful Selek­tope con­tain­ing antifoul­ing pro­ducts greatly reduces foul­ing, poten­tially sav­ing 30–40% on fuel costs, while own­ers oper­at­ing in aggres­sive waters and with an unpre­dictable idling scheme can avoid fuel penal­ties of more than USD 100,000/year for small ves­sels and over USD 1M/year for large ves­sels. Com­par­a­tive results after 7 months in sta­tic con­di­tions on the west coast of Swe­den. STATUS CURRENT SELEKTOPE APPROVAL STATUS SAFETY DATA SHEETS Selek­tope-CN Selek­tope-DK Selek­tope-GR Selek­tope-EN Selek­tope-DE Selek­tope-ES Selek­tope-JP Selek­tope-FI Selek­tope-FR Selek­tope-IT Selek­tope-SE Selek­tope-KR Selek­tope-PO Selek­tope-PL Selek­tope-NO Selek­tope-NL Biofouling Biofouling | Impact | Invasive Species | Fouling Pressure BIOFOULING The vari­ety among bio­foul­ing organ­isms is highly diverse and extends far beyond attach­ment of bar­na­cles and sea­weeds. Accord­ing to some esti­mates, over 1,700 species com­pris­ing over 4,000 organ­isms are respon­si­ble for bio­foul­ing which occurs in all oceans around the globe. Bio­foul­ing is divided into micro foul­ing — biofilm for­ma­tion and bac­te­r­ial adhe­sion, and macro foul­ing — attach­ment of larger organ­isms. IMPACT ON FUEL AND EMISSIONS Bio­foul­ing has a large impact on fuel con­sump­tion as it has been demon­strated that bar­na­cle foul­ing increase fric­tional drag by up to 80%. Despite major con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of more effi­cient coat­ing sys­tems there is still room for improve­ment to cut another 10% of the indus­tries total fuel con­sump­tion amount­ing to some 350 mil­lion tons of fuel per year. Selek­tope is brought to mar­ket to main­tain smooth, clean hulls achiev­ing energy effi­ciency and reduc­ing oper­a­tional and envi­ron­men­tal costs. AQUATIC INVASIVE SPECIES Fouled hulls are fur­ther known to act as vehi­cles of trans­porta­tion for inva­sive aquatic species, which have proven to have neg­a­tive effects on marine eco-sys­tems. The issue is being adressed region­ally and through IMO, result­ing in pos­si­ble hull inspec­tions prior to mak­ing port calls. FOULING PRESSURE Although marine bio­foul­ing occurs in all oceans, the foul­ing risk is dif­fer­ent in dif­fer­ent areas. In gen­eral, trop­i­cal or sub-trop­i­cal waters are con­sid­ered high risk areas with rapid growth and set­tle­ment of organ­isms. With aver­age global water tem­per­a­tures increas­ing, high risk foul­ing is expand­ing, cov­er­ing larger areas. Idling in these regions is there­fore asso­ci­ated with large penal­ties as regards fuel con­sump­tion and main­te­nance costs. Stories Lena Lindblad | Astra Zeneca | Laurin Maritime | Marinvest | Swedish Sea Rescue Society I-Tech co-founder and R&D Direc­tor Lena Lind­blad spoke at the Swedish Shipown­ers’ Association’s Entre­pre­neur Day about how the intro­duc­tion of a phar­ma­co­log­i­cal mode of action to com­bat bar­na­cle set­tle­ment has proven to be both eco­nom­i­cally and envi­ron­men­tally effec­tive in fight­ing antifoul­ing. Mag­nus Björsne talks about why Selek­tope adds to a ver­ti­cal inte­gra­tion of knowl­edge in the BioVen­ture­Hub at Astra Zeneca. Mikael Karls­son talks about why Lau­rin Mar­itime, after try­ing the Selek­tope test pan­els, is the first ship­ping com­pany to do a full hull paint­ing with Selek­tope as the active antifoul­ing agent. Fredrik Stub­ner, Mar­in­vest, talks about the impor­tance of keep­ing the hulls on the company’s ves­sels clean, and how Selek­tope test pan­els have shown promis­ing results. Sav­ing lives with­out any gov­ern­ment fund­ing. In case of alarm, the Swedish Sea Res­cue Soci­etys vol­un­teers are set to depart within 15 min­utes, at any time, in any weather — 24 hours a day. Watch the film to find out how Selek­tope helps them save money, but more impor­tantly time, every day. I-Tech I-Tech | Business Idea | Vision | Investors | Supporters THE COMPANY BEHIND SELEKTOPE I-Tech is a Gothen­burg based com­pany with global reach, hold­ing all IP and reg­u­la­tory rights to its all new antifoul­ing agent Selek­tope (generic name, Medeto­mi­dine). Rely­ing on aca­d­e­mic research in Gothen­burg, I-Tech has since 2006 suc­cess­fully trans­formed the sci­en­tific inven­tion into a com­mer­cially ready and avail­able antifoul­ing agent. I-Tech has had sev­eral list­ings as top start-up com­pany and is now an entirely com­mer­cially dri­ven com­pany with con­tin­u­ous rev­enue streams. Read more about our team Read more about the board BUSINESS IDEA I-Tech’s busi­ness con­cept is to offer Selek­tope to the global paint indus­try as the prin­ci­pal active agent in marine antifoul­ing paints. The com­pany is highly com­mit­ted to serv­ing its cus­tomers in the best way pos­si­ble, and is always ready to sup­port its cus­tomers, from reg­u­la­tor sup­port and advice to indus­trial inte­gra­tion and han­dling of Selek­tope. The com­pany will also con­tin­u­ously seek and defend the nec­es­sary patents in order to use Selek­tope as a sub­stance against marine bio­foul­ing on a global basis. BUSINESS VISION The company’s vision is to become the pre­ferred sup­plier to the pro­fes­sional and non-pro­fes­sional antifoul­ing mar­ket. The company’s mis­sion is to bring new dimen­sions to the global antifoul­ing indus­try. INVESTORS Volvo Group Ven­ture Cap­i­tal AB Mintage Sci­en­tific AB ALMI Invest Västsverige AB Aqua­ma­rine Ltd I-TECH IS SUPPORTED BY The Swedish Energy Asso­ci­a­tion The Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Ini­tia­tive SeaFront AstraZeneca Bioven­ture hub Eco-Inno­va­tion Eco-Innovation Project ECO PROJECT Com­pany infor­ma­tion Com­pany Pre­sen­ta­tion ECO-Inno­va­tion Report Tech­ni­cal Report Newslet­ters Newslet­ter 1 Newslet­ter 2 Newslet­ter 3 Newslet­ter4 Board BOARD Stefan Sedersten Chair­man Ste­fan holds a M.Sc. in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Chalmers uni­ver­sity of tech­nol­ogy in Gothen­burg. He works as man­age­ment con­sul­tant and senior advi­sor. Ste­fan has a back­ground from radar elec­tron­ics and marine propul­sion indus­try and has held var­i­ous man­age­r­ial posi­tions in pur­chas­ing, pro­duc­tion and R&D. Ste­fan was the COO and the vice CEO at Berg Propul­sion group, a lead­ing sup­plier of marine pro­peller sys­tems for the indus­trial and mer­chant ship­ping indus­try until 2013 when the com­pany was acquired by Cater­pil­lar Inc. Bertil Arvidsson Board mem­ber Bertil holds an M.Sc. in engi­neer­ing. He cur­rently holds a posi­tion as Direc­tor for Tech­ni­cal and Envi­ron­men­tal ques­tions in Swedish Shipown­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion. He also serves in the Euro­pean and Inter­na­tional shipown­ers asso­ci­a­tions in par­al­lel with assign­ments in IMO com­mit­tees on tech­ni­cal and envi­ron­men­tal issues. Mats Enegren Board mem­ber Erik Hedenryd Board mem­ber Erik is a busi­ness ori­ented and result dri­ven VC Investor with global expe­ri­ence of build­ing suc­cess­ful high growth com­pa­nies. He has exten­sive board expe­ri­ence and a good mix of large scale cor­po­rate expe­ri­ence with hands on entre­pre­neur­ial start-up tal­ent. Erik is today employed as Invest­ment Direc­tor at Volvo Ven­tures and has a back­ground from trans­porta­tion, auto­mo­tive and aero­space indus­try. Pre­vi­ously he has held dif­fer­ent posi­tions in busi­ness devel­op­ment, pur­chas­ing and pro­duc­tion devel­op­ment within the Volvo Group. Erik holds a Mas­ter of Sci­ence in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Chalmers Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy in Gothen­burg and a Bach­e­lor Degree in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion from Gothen­burg Uni­ver­sity. Mikael Laurin Board mem­ber Mikael has a wide range of expe­ri­ence from many indus­tries, coun­tries and dis­ci­plines. He has worked for dif­fer­ent con­sul­tancy firms, with focus on sup­ply chain man­age­ment, busi­ness strat­egy and man­age­ment. He co-founded a con­sul­tancy firm in 2002, with focus on busi­ness and mar­ket­ing strat­egy for the com­mu­ni­ca­tions and media indus­try. Since 2007 he has been CEO of Lau­rin Mar­itime. Lau­rin Mar­itime oper­ates a mod­ern fleet of tankers for oil prod­ucts and chem­i­cals world­wide. Leif Darner Board mem­ber Leif is the owner of Darner Asset Man­age­ment AB, a con­sult­ing firm. Addi­tion­ally he is Board Direc­tor of LKAB AB, Swe­den and Board Mem­ber at Flowserve Cor­po­ra­tion, Dal­las, US. Prior to this, he was an Exec­u­tive Direc­tor on the Board of Man­age­ment at AkzoNo­bel, respon­si­ble for Per­for­mance Coat­ings from 2008 and for Chem­i­cals from 2004. Before this, he was Man­ag­ing Direc­tor BU Marine & Pro­tec­tive Coat­ings. Until 1999 he held var­i­ous posi­tions such as Chief Exec­u­tive North­ern Europe and Chief Exec­u­tive Pro­tec­tive Coat­ings Europe at Cour­taulds plc, UK. Prior to this , he was Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for Inter­na­tional Färg AB, Swe­den Per Jansson Board mem­ber Per has been involved with the med­ical indus­try for more than twenty years in lead­ing posi­tions. He has man­aged research based start-up com­pa­nies to suc­cess­ful devel­op­ments in both clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial terms. Per is the Man­ag­ing Direc­tor in Mintage Sci­en­tific and its sub­sidiary Vicore Pharma. News Press | Articles PRESS RELEASES » The first branded marine coat­ings to fea­ture the break­through antifoul­ing ingre­di­ent Selek­tope® Read the arti­cle » I-tech has been granted sup­port from the Swedish Energy Agency Read the arti­cle » Selek­tope® wins Euro­pean Marine Engi­neer­ing Award Read the arti­cle » I-Tech gets large mar­ket recog­ni­tion of the newly EU-approved agent Selek­tope Read the arti­cle See all press releases ARTICLES » I-Tech: The rise of antifoul­ing prod­ucts Read the arti­cle » Break­through, and a lot of push­ing Read the arti­cle » Antifoul­ing break­through? Read the arti­cle » Bio­cide Selek­tope Could Rev­o­lu­tion­ize Anti-foul­ing Read the arti­cle See all arti­cles Team TEAM Selek­tope is devel­oped, man­u­fac­tured and mar­keted by I-Tech AB, a Swedish lim­ited com­pany founded in 2000 by a group of researchers from Chalmers Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy and the Uni­ver­sity of Gothen­burg. Oliver Weigenand COO Oliver holds a PhD from Göt­tin­gen Uni­ver­sity in Ger­many and an engi­neer­ing degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment HNEE in Ger­many. Oliver has an impres­sive track record from his eight years at LANXESS AG and has suc­cess­fully held posi­tions as Global Prod­uct Man­ager (includ­ing marine bio­cides). Oliver has also served as Pres­i­dent and CEO of an SME within the LANXESS Corp. Oliver recently served as Vice Pres­i­dent North and Cen­tral Amer­ica at LANXESS Cor­po­ra­tion. oliver.weigenand@i-tech.se Philip Chaabane CEO Philip holds an MSc in Mate­r­ial Sci­ence Engi­neer­ing from both Luleå Uni­ver­sity of Tech­nol­ogy and EEIGM, France. He has exten­sive expe­ri­ence from lead­ing posi­tions within busi­ness as well as oper­a­tional activ­i­ties in R&D and pro­duc­tion in high tech and inter­na­tional envi­ron­ments. Prior to work­ing at I-Tech, Philip was the Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Director/Engineering Man­ager at Pow­er­Cell. He has also held var­i­ous oper­a­tional respon­si­bil­i­ties within the Volvo Aero Cor­po­ra­tion. Philip.chaabane@i-tech.se Lena Lindblad R & D Direc­tor Lena is one of the founders of I-Tech AB. She was an ini­tia­tor of the research project Marine Paint as well as one of the inven­tors and patent hold­ers of the Selek­tope® con­cept. Lena holds a PhD in Phar­ma­col­ogy and is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at the Fac­ulty of Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­sity of Gothen­burg. lena.lindblad@i-tech.se Cecilia Ohlauson Reg­u­la­tory Affairs Man­ager Cecilia’s aca­d­e­mic back­ground is in eco­tox­i­col­ogy of bio­cides and she holds a PhD in Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence. Cecilia has been work­ing with reg­u­la­tory affairs since 2008 at I-Tech and prior to that she was in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try where she worked with qual­ity issues. cecilia.ohlauson@i-tech.se Dan Isaksson R & D Chemist Dan has a PhD in Organic Chem­istry and joined I-Tech after a two-year post doc­tor­ate in the Marine Paint project at Chalmers Uni­ver­sity of Technology/University of Gothen­burg. dan.isaksson@i-tech.se Nina Carlén Mar­ket­ing and Admin­is­tra­tion. Nina divides her time between I-Tech and Mintage Sci­en­tific (owner com­pany of I-Tech). She has worked for I-Tech since 2009 and prior to that within mar­ket­ing for Ini­tios Med­ical AB and Astra Tech AB. nina.carlen@i-tech.se Contact CONTACT If you would like to receive test sam­ples or more details about Selek­tope, please describe your inter­est, ideas or visions in an email and we will con­tact you for fur­ther dis­cus­sions. For more infor­ma­tion on how the inno­va­tion around Selek­tope can improve your busi­ness, please con­tact us at: info@i-tech.se or call +46 31 788 05 60. I-Tech AB c/o Astra Zeneca AB Pep­pared­sle­den 1 SE- 431 83 Möl­ndal Swe­den By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.Accept Read More Privacy & Cookies Policy