Ridding the world of toxic organics in wastewater

Our Story

Each year industrial manufacturing operations worldwide in virtually every market generate billions of gallons of wastewater contaminated with toxic, non-biodegradable organic pollutants. Much of this wastewater can’t be effectively treated on-site with conventional treatment technology and must be trucked off-site for incineration. It’s a complex, multi-billion dollar pain point with significant long-term risks to industry, communities, human health and the environment.

Axine was created to solve this problem and establish a new industry standard that delivers exceptional performance, flexibility and value compared to incumbents. Today, we’re achieving this goal with an incredibly talented and entrepreneurial team who are passionate about delivering solutions that disrupt the market and deliver the highest value to customers.

From modest beginnings, Axine has grown from concept to scale-up and commercial deployment with multinational customers. We’re incredibly fortunate to be supported by a global network of world-class research agencies, suppliers, advisors, partners and investors in one of the world’s top cleantech ecosystems. We’re proud of our accomplishments and we’re just getting started. Join us as we continue this journey.

 

Leadership

Mark Ralph

President & CEO

Mark has over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Axine as the President and CEO, Mark held diverse roles of increasing responsibility in drug discovery, operations, CRO management, financial management, business development, licensing and venture capital. He served on the board of directors of three companies in the digital health space (Wellth, xCures and Optina Diagnostics) and represented Boehringer Ingelheim in a fund-in-fund investment.

Mark holds a MS degree in chemistry from Memorial University (Canada) and a MBA with concentration in finance from the University of Connecticut.

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Greg Peet

Executive Chair / Acting CFO

Greg Peet is an accomplished business leader, entrepreneur, angel investor, and corporate director specifically with technology companies. He specializes in creating customer-centric and operationally focused corporate cultures transforming early-stage companies from R&D organizations to viable commercial enterprises. While CEO at A.L.I. Technologies, he grew the business from 14 to 400 employees and over $100 million in annual revenues resulting in a sale to McKesson Corp. in 2002 for $526 million in cash, marking one of the most important transactions in the medical image management market.   Greg was recognized as Ernst & Young’s “Pacific Entrepreneur of the Year” (2002), B.C. Technology Industry Association. “Person of the Year” (2007) and NACO Canadian “Angel Investor of the Year” (2013).

Greg’s community service also includes appointments to the British Columbia Premier’s Technology Counsel (2002 – 2016 / Chairman from 2006),  governor of the University of British Columbia (2012 – 2016 / Chairman, Finance from 2014).  He has assisted BC Technology Social Venture Partners (director), a charitable foundation created by members of BC’s technology community to support innovative non-profit groups serving children, women at risk and BC Science World (Chairman’s counsel). He was the founder of the Student Inspiration Foundation, a charitable enterprise having the mission of funding exceptional educator proposals for innovative teaching projects in the secondary school system in BC.  Greg was a founding donor for the Entrepreneurship@UBC Seed Fund and serves as Chairman of the fund’s management company.

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Louis LeBrun, PE

VP of Sales

PE, VP of Sales
Louis LeBrun is a highly experienced professional in water and wastewater technology commercialization, with over 25 years of experience. Before joining Axine, he founded AqualytX, LLC, providing commercialization and support to water technology companies and investors. With leadership roles at Hoganas Environment Solutions, X-Flow (Pentair), and Parkson Corporation, Louis has a strong track record. At Axine, he leads the sales team, focused on expanding distribution. He holds BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from North Carolina State University, an MBA from Duke University, and is a licensed Professional Engineer in multiple states. His diverse background and expertise drive innovation and growth at Axine in water and wastewater treatment

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Victor Leung, Ph.D. and P.Eng

Chief Technology Officer

In his role with Axine, Victor is responsible for product verification and validation, and oversees lab and field testing activities. Victor’s team works closely with Axine’s product development, engineering and business development teams to ensure alignment between customer requirements, technology performance and service delivery.

Prior to joining Axine, Victor held several industrial and academic product development positions, developing advanced materials and specialty chemical additives for construction, pulp & paper, and medical industries. In these roles, Victor was involved in product conceptualization, prototype design, lab and field testing, scale-up production from lab to pilot and full commercial scales, and customer application support.

Victor holds a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from The University of British Columbia, is a co-inventor in three patents and patent applications, and an author of several academic publications.

 

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Krista Ramirez

Director of Sales, Americas

Krista Ramirez leads Axine’s pharmaceutical market business in the Americas including working directly with pharma manufacturing plants to develop and implement on-site wastewater treatment solutions. She has extensive background and experience in industrial wastewater including the pharmaceutical, food and beverage, petrochemical, pulp and paper and chemical industries where she brings a pragmatic approach to complex problems. Krista has spent much of her career working in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and other Latin American countries as well as Southeast Asia and Europe, she is fluent in English and Spanish. She served on the Minnesota District Export Council, the WWEMA (Water and Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers Association) Board of Directors and has been an active participant in the Minnesota Water Technology Roundtable for years. Krista studied business at the Tecnológico de Monterrey and Universidad de Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Mexico and holds a BS in International Business and a BA in Spanish from Minnesota State University – Mankato.

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Mark Ralph

President & CEO

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Greg Peet

Executive Chair / Acting CFO

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Louis LeBrun, PE

VP of Sales

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Victor Leung, Ph.D. and P.Eng

Chief Technology Officer

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Krista Ramirez

Director of Sales, Americas

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Board

Chris Morrison

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Greg Peet

Chair

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Roger A. Strauch

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Dr. Wal Van Lierop

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Moe Kermani

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Geoff Catherwood

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Chris Morrison

Chris Morrison is a recognized sustainable water technology executive and team-builder with an extraordinary history operating from the trenches to the boardroom. A transformational leader with a proven track International record of digging into impactful technologies, extracting maximum value, building high powered teams, and driving process improvements. 30 year plus record of success with water treatment global leadership roles in North America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

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Greg Peet

Chair

Greg Peet is an accomplished business leader, entrepreneur, angel investor, and corporate director specifically with technology companies. He specializes in creating customer-centric and operationally focused corporate cultures transforming early-stage companies from R&D organizations to viable commercial enterprises. While CEO at A.L.I. Technologies, he grew the business from 14 to 400 employees and over $100 million in annual revenues resulting in a sale to McKesson Corp. in 2002 for $526 million in cash, marking one of the most important transactions in the medical image management market.   Greg was recognized as Ernst & Young’s “Pacific Entrepreneur of the Year” (2002), B.C. Technology Industry Association. “Person of the Year” (2007) and NACO Canadian “Angel Investor of the Year” (2013).

Greg’s community service also includes appointments to the British Columbia Premier’s Technology Counsel (2002 – 2016 / Chairman from 2006),  governor of the University of British Columbia (2012 – 2016 / Chairman, Finance from 2014).  He has assisted BC Technology Social Venture Partners (director), a charitable foundation created by members of BC’s technology community to support innovative non-profit groups serving children, women at risk and BC Science World (Chairman’s counsel). He was the founder of the Student Inspiration Foundation, a charitable enterprise having the mission of funding exceptional educator proposals for innovative teaching projects in the secondary school system in BC.  Greg was a founding donor for the Entrepreneurship@UBC Seed Fund and serves as Chairman of the fund’s management company.

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Roger A. Strauch

Roger Strauch is Chair of The Roda Group, an early stage venture capital group, based in Berkeley, California. The firm, co-founded in 1997 with Dan Miller, is focused on investment opportunities that address the consequences of climate change, stress on the Earth’s natural resources and the increased demand for low carbon energy. They are lead investors in Inventys, which has developed a post-combustion CO2 capture technology for power plants; Gridtential Energy, Inc., which has developed an advanced lead acid battery that incorporates semiconductor wafers inside the battery to greatly increase performance in energy storage and automotive applications; and Axine Water Technologies, which has developed a low cost and chemical-free solution for treating industrial wastewater.

Roger is an investor in and advisor to PicsArt and SoloLearn – mobile apps developed in Armenia.  With over 100 million monthly users, PicsArt is a mobile suite of creative picture editing tools and a community of artistic content creators.  SoloLearn is a mobile based code learning application, with millions of monthly users, providing programming language courses.

Roger is Chair of the Board of Directors of Cool Systems, the manufacturer of Game Ready, a medical physical therapy system. He was the first CEO and former chair of Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com), a leading search engine on the web. Mr. Strauch was a board member and former CEO of Symmetricom, a public telecommunications equipment manufacturer.  He co-founded TCSI Corp., a telecom software company. As TCSI’s Chair and CEO, Mr. Strauch led the company from a start-up to a successful IPO and secondary public offering.

Mr. Strauch is a member of the Engineering Dean’s College Advisory Board of the University of California at Berkeley. He is the recipient of the Wheeler Oak Meritorious Award from the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Strauch and his wife Dr. Julie Kulhanjian have been named and honored as “Builders of Berkeley.” He is Chair of the Board of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and is an executive member of the  Berkeley Repertory Theatre Board.  He is a Life Trustee of the Armenian Assembly of America. Mr. Strauch is a member of the Madison Council, a philanthropic advisory board to the Librarian of Congress. He is also on the Board of Trustees of the Northside Center for Child Development, a mental health social services agency in Harlem, New York City.  Mr. Strauch is the Founder and Chair of The Paros Foundation, which supports and implements humanitarian projects in Armenia focused on education, development and culture.

Mr. Strauch endowed the Roger A. Strauch Chair in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and co-founded the William Saroyan Endowment for Armenian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Strauch earned a Bachelor of Science degree, with distinction, from Cornell University and Master of Science degree from Stanford University, both in electrical engineering. He holds two patents in the area of wireless communications.

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Dr. Wal Van Lierop

Dr. Wal Van Lierop is an award-winning business leader and visionary in innovation, sustainability and cleantech, with unique industry insights gained through deep operational experience as a venture capitalist, corporate executive, international consultant and university professor.

Wal founded Chrysalix Venture Capital, one of the earliest and most recognised private equity firms focused on industrial innovation, where he has helped raise more than $250M and participated in more than $1B in venture capital funding. He has sourced, invested in and advised numerous startups, assisting them in building breakthrough solutions for the new world economy while working hand-in-hand with large multinational companies on their innovation strategies. Currently Wal is a member of the Board of Directors at Chrysalix portfolio companies General Fusion, Inventys and Axine Water Technologies.

Wal is a longstanding contributor to the tech community in British Columbia and abroad as the founder of New Ventures BC, a founding member of the BC CEO Alliance and Evok Innovations, contributor to various Vancouver greenest city projects, Advisory Board member of the Cleantech Group and judge of the Cleantech 100. He has been an adjunct professor at both SFU’s Beedie School and UBC’s Sauder School of Business, and is a frequent speaker at events like GLOBE Series, Oil & Money, the BCTECH Summit, Energy for Tomorrow and the Cleantech Forum.

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Moe focuses on investments in the areas of cloud computing, machine intelligence, analytics, and cybersecurity. Prior to joining Vanedge, Moe was a Vice President of NetApp Inc. (NTAP:NASDAQ), a leading provider of enterprise data storage solutions. Before that, Moe was President and CEO of Bycast Inc., the world leader in storage virtualization software for large-scale digital archives and storage clouds. During his tenure at Bycast, Moe led the company from a seed stage startup to a profitable market leader with a global customer base. Bycast was successfully acquired by NetApp in the spring of 2010. Moe is a member of the Board of Directors of the Toronto Stock Exchange (TMX).

Moe has extensive experience in working with entrepreneurial companies and taking leading-edge technology products to market. He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of HEAVY.AI (previously OmniSci), Illusense, xCures, Rigado, Plotly, and Echodyne. He has also served on the boards of Wurldtech Security Technologies (acquired by GE), Metafor (acquired by Splunk), MediaCore (acquired by Workday), Bitfusion (acquired by VMware), Xtract, and Boundless Spatial (acquired by Planet Labs), and Quantum Benchmark (acquired by Keysight).

In recognition of his work, Moe was awarded the BC Technology Association’s Person of the Year for 2011. He is also a recipient of Business in Vancouver “Forty Under 40” award. Moe holds a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of British Columbia and holds several U.S. Patents for his past technical work.

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Geoff is a registered professional engineer and has 14 years of experience in industrial automation and process control and over 20 years of venture capital experience. Prior to joining BDC Venture Capital in 2001, he worked for Bailey Canada and Asea Brown Boveri — large multi-national industrial process automation suppliers. He has diverse operational experience in the process automation industry, including field service, system commissioning, engineering, management, and sales.

Geoff administers much of BDC Venture Capital’s Industrial, Clean and Energy Technology portfolio in Canada. He is active on the boards of a number of companies. He also volunteers in a number of programs promoting entrepreneurship, including chairing the final jury for New Ventures B.C. for many years.

Geoff holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia and an Executive MBA from Simon Fraser University. He has also completed the Canadian Securities Course. He recently completed the Institute of Corporate Directors – Rotman, Directors Education Program, (September, 2019).

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Investors

Asahi Kasei

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BDC Capital

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The Roda Group

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Chrysalix

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SDTC

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Asahi Kasei is an equity partner in Axine and is a globally active diversified company with operations in the Material, Homes and Health Care businesses. The Material division encompasses fibers & textiles, petrochemicals, performance polymers, performance materials, consumables, battery separators, and electronic devices. The Homes division provides housing and construction materials. The Health Care division includes pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and acute critical care devices and systems. With approximately 34,000 employees around the world, the Asahi Kasei Group serves customers in more than 100 countries.

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BDC Capital is an equity partner in Axine through its Industrial, Clean and Energy Technology (ICE) Venture Fund. Our ICE Venture Fund tailors its investments towards capital-efficient and scalable businesses enhancing resource productivity with the potential to operate across a global market. BDC Capital is the investment arm of BDC – Canada’s only bank devoted exclusively to entrepreneurs. With $3 billion under management, BDC Capital serves as a strategic partner to the country’s most innovative firms with 700 investee companies. It offers a full spectrum of risk capital, from seed investments to transition capital, supporting Canadian entrepreneurs who wish to scale their businesses into global champions.  BDC’s venture arm does direct and indirect investments as well as support Canada’s venture capital ecosystem.

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The Roda Group is an equity partner in Axine and provides entrepreneurs the resources, environment and guidance to launch and grow their high technology businesses. The Roda Group is a venture capital group focusing on large market based and opportunities that address the consequences of climate change, stress on the Earth’s natural resources and the increased demand for low carbon energy.

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Chrysalix EVC is an equity partner in Axine and is a venture capital firm investing in technologies that will drive the new energy economy. The Firm provides early-stage financing, hands-on assistance and strategic connections to innovative companies confronting the world’s most important energy and environmental issues. For the past two years, the Firm has ranked the most active clean energy technology venture capital firm in the world. The Chrysalix team has an exceptional track record in this emerging industry. Collectively, it has over 120 years of experience in the energy industry and over 120 years in the venture capital business. The Firm is backed by a strong group of international blue-chip industrial and financial Limited Partners, and is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) is an arm’s‐length foundation created by the Government of Canada to support innovative and entrepreneurial clean technology projects. Our portfolio of companies develop and demonstrate new technologies that address issues related to climate change, air quality, clean water and soil.

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NRC-IRAP

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WED CANADA

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Innovate BC

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National Research Council-Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) is Canada’s premier innovation assistance program for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It is a vital component of the NRC, a cornerstone in Canada’s innovation system, regarded world-wide as one of the best programs of its kind.

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Western Economic Diversification Canada (WD) is a Canadian federal department that works towards building strong, competitive and innovative businesses and communities in Western Canada. Their main priorities focus on community economic development; trade and investment; innovation; and business development.

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Innovate BC is a one stop service centre to connect innovators — large and small — with BC government funding, tools, resources and support. They help innovators in BC access funding, launch their ideas and connect with the experts they need to build great companies.

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