Professor Darren Martin of UQ School of Chemical Engineering and Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
Professor Darren Martin of UQ School of Chemical Engineering and Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.
19 June 2012

TenasiTech Pty Ltd, a materials science start-up company from UniQuest based on University of Queensland research, has secured A$1.4 million in grants and equity capital from the Queensland Government and Uniseed.

The funding announcement comes just prior to TenasiTech’s presentation this week at the TechConnect Innovation Showcase in California, the world's largest multi-disciplinary, multi-sector innovation and technology business event.

UniQuest Managing Director David Henderson said the additional funding would help the start-up company with co-development programs targeting high value applications for its novel polymer technology.

“TensasiTech was launched in 2008 with seed funding from Uniseed, and while government grant funding from COMET and Commercialisation Australia has also advanced the company’s product development, these high profile milestones will see TenasiTech accelerate its efforts to offer a range of industries a competitive edge,” Mr Henderson said.

“The grant, investment, and opportunity to present at a high calibre international event reflect a growing confidence in university research as a valuable generator of commercially viable innovation.”

The Hon Ros Bates, the Queensland Government’s Minister for Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts, announced the A$925,000 grant at the 2012 International BIO Conference in Boston, USA. TenasiTech’s industry partners in the program are three non-competing multi-national companies (no further details were disclosed).

TenasiTech Managing Director, and Uniseed Investment Manager, Richard Marshall, said “The Queensland Government grant supports our goal to be the first choice for high performance composite polymers.

“Our technology is now providing new materials options for customers in engineering, sporting and water treatment applications. We are working with elastomers, foams and multiple polymer families and can customize our additive technology to suit our partners’ specific requirements,” Mr Marshall said.

Unlike other nanotechnology companies, TenasiTech is able to produce material at industrial scale that is competitively priced and fits within the existing polymer supply chain. TenasiTech’s additive technology – Adaptive Polyol™ – is a new way of incorporating its proprietary nanotechnology additive into a pre-polymer ingredient.

TenasiTech is now working in multiple polymer families including acrylics and silicones, and polyurethane elastomers and foams. Importantly, the company is building a pipeline of proprietary product lines of its Adaptive Polyol™ to suit the specific performance and processing requirements of high value applications.

The nanotechnology originates from 10 years of research by Professor Darren Martin at the School of Chemical Engineering and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, both at The University of Queensland.

UniQuest licensed the technology licensed to TenasiTech in 2008. The company owns and controls a number of patent applications which are in progress in several of the major markets.

Postscript
The TenasiTech news is one of several announcements from UniQuest coinciding with this year’s BIO (booth 3435 in the Australia Pavilion).

Media enquiries:
UniQuest: Leanne Wyvill +61 7 3365 4037, 0409 767 199 or l.wyvill@uniquest.com.au
TenasiTech: Richard Marshall +61 411 600 314 or richard@tenasitech.com

About TenasiTech www.tenasitech.com
TenasiTech is a materials company commercializing Adaptive Polyol™ which delivers dramatic improvements in the mechanical strength, creep resistance, compressive set, chemical resistance, thermo-stability and other materials performance and processing properties of polyurethanes. These improvements are made with no trade-off in the material’s clarity or flexibility. The company has secured close to a million dollars in equity capital from Uniseed since 2008. TenasiTech is based in Brisbane Australia with manufacturing capability in the US, Germany and Australia. The underlying patented technology was developed at The University of Queensland and the company was established by UniQuest, the main technology transfer company at The University of Queensland, and the technology licensed to TenasiTech in 2007.

About UniQuest Pty Limited www.uniquest.com.au
Established by The University of Queensland in 1984, UniQuest is widely recognised as one of Australia’s largest and most successful university commercialisation groups, benchmarking in the top tier of technology transfer worldwide. From an intellectual property portfolio of 1,500+ patents it has created over 70 companies, and since 2000 UniQuest and its start-ups have raised more than $450 million to take university technologies to market. Annual sales of products using UQ technology and licensed by UniQuest are running at $3 billion. UniQuest now commercialises innovations developed at The University of Queensland and its commercialisation partner institutions: the University of Wollongong, University of Technology Sydney, James Cook University, University of Tasmania, Mater Medical Research Institute, and Queensland Health. UniQuest also provides access to an expansive and exclusive network of independent academics to tailor a consulting or project R&D solution to meet the diverse needs of industry and government, facilitating some 500 consulting, expert opinion, testing, and contract research services each year. UniQuest is also a leading Australasian provider of international development assistance recognised for excellence in technical leadership, management and research. Working with agencies such as AusAID, NZAID, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, UniQuest has developed and implemented more than 400 projects with 60+ countries throughout the Pacific, South-East Asia, the Indian sub-continent and Africa.