Administrative and legal support
More people in the lab means progress in the technology development. It also means recruiting, employment contracts, employee development interviews, and day-to-day management. With support from the VPX programme, the two co-founders were able to hire five employees from 2023 to 2024 to further develop the technology. In addition, they were given access to office space, laboratories, and administrative support from DTU. The hiring of employees was a milestone for the start-up, and for Suzanne Z. Andersen, it meant that she went from being a researcher in the lab to being a business manager. With employees, she also had to handle the meeting between different work cultures and establish good meeting structures and management settings for the employees.
“Without the VPX programme, we would not have become a start-up. Through VPX, we got financial support and administrative help to hire people. We also received support to get the legal aspects in place via DTU, which has been challenging. This meant that we had the resources and peace to develop the technology, while at the same time gaining business management experience,” says Suzanne Z. Andersen.
Decentralized and sustainable ammonia production
To understand the perspectives of Suzanne Z. Andersen’s discovery and the potential of NitroVolt, we need to zoom in on ammonia. Ammonia is now one of the most important food production chemicals. All over the world, agriculture is fertilizing with ammonia—otherwise we would not be able to feed all of us.
NitroVolt will enable the local farmer to produce ammonia from water, air, and electricity directly on the farm. This will save the environment from CO2 emissions, as production can be completely CO2 neutral using green electricity, and the transport of ammonia from the current large, central production facilities in countries such as Russia, China, and the United States can be avoided.
NitroVolt’s technology has the potential to revolutionize agriculture, but the road to get there is long. The technology will be developed and scaled up from being able to produce 1 g of ammonia per day in the laboratory, to the farmer being able to produce 150 kg of ammonia per day on the farm. The start-up must find investors, the legal framework must be clarified and, perhaps most importantly: The right team to drive the development must be set and managed.
Strong business case
When researcher Mattia Saccoccio joined the project in 2019, he insisted that NitroVolt should talk to the customers of the technology and not just stand in the lab and develop the technology.
“Getting a farm to work is incredibly complicated, and many factors have to be taken into account. The biggest risk is the weather, which is beyond your control. We have an incredible amount of respect for farmers, and it’s important that our technology makes their lives easier. Luckily for us, it was already on the third farm we visited that the farmer asked us when he could buy our system. We knew there was a market for our dream,” says Mattia Saccoccio.
The two researchers have spent many hours in the field—literally. To get to know their customers and gain insight into the market they will be a part of, they have spoken to over 170 people. From Danish and foreign farmers and agricultural organizations to ammonia producers and distributors. They have now gained insight into how their technology will be included in the farmer’s daily work, as well as what the entire supply chain looks like.
“The first step is to find out if there is a market for your technology, and it has been crucial to NitroVolt’s success as a start-up that we have talked to potential customers. You can make the best technology, but if no one wants to pay for it, you don’t have a business case,” says Suzanne Z. Andersen.
To further develop its business case, NitroVolt has received advice and support through various entrepreneurship courses and programmes—both through DTU and other national and international innovation programmes. At DTU, they have recently completed a course at DTU Earthbound—an initiative that matches DTU researchers with recognized entrepreneurs with the aim of getting research out of the laboratory faster and into a start-up.
Here, NitroVolt was matched with the experienced technology entrepreneur Rasmus Bjerngaard, who helped them start up the business over six months. Among other things, he has helped them refine their technical-economic analysis of NitroVolt’s technology to find the cost of their product, produce presentation materials, and manage contracts for investors.
Leaving the incubator at DTU
Today, Suzanne Z. Andersen spends most of her waking hours fundraising and selling NitroVolt’s vision to investors in Denmark and abroad, as well as leading the start-up. In the last year alone, she has been on 16 trips to attend conferences and give presentations about NitroVolt.
“Before the VPX programme, Mattia and I were lab scientists. Now we are business leaders and entrepreneurs. I try to be in the lab two days a week, but I don’t always manage to,” says Suzanne Z. Andersen.
When the Nitrofix Solutions project leaves DTU, all ties with the university are severed. Formally, this means that the employees will go from being DTU employees to being employees of NitroVolt, which is now a registered company. For Susanne Z. Andersen, this means that in the future, she will also handle administration, finance, and HR—in addition to the day-to-day management, fundraising, and technology development.
“DTU has given us the funds to develop our technology and the time to get the legal and administrative basis for the company in place. This has eased the transition to becoming an independent business,” concludes Suzanne Z. Andersen.
NitroVolt still has three to four years of tech development ahead before it is ready to sell the first ammonia unit on the market. Right now, the company is working on developing a test unit for Danish farms that can produce several kg of ammonia per day. They expect to have it ready for testing on a Danish farm in 2025. The goal is a full-scale unit that can produce up to 150 kg of ammonia per day for a standard farm. They expect to have the unit on the market in 2027.
