Xeros, the cleaning technology company using polymer beads in a washing machine, has raised £10 million from new and existing investors as it looks to accelerate the roll out of its commercial laundry cleaning system.
The round of investment has been led by Invesco Perpetual, which has contributed £6 million, alongside IP Group, Entrepreneurs Fund, Enterprise Ventures’ RisingStars II Fund, Finance Yorkshire and Parkwalk Advisors.
The company’s system cleans clothes without the need for much water by using polymer beads. Beads are released into the drum for cleaning, and are then removed from the clothes once the process is complete. Xeros claims that the technology uses 80 per cent less water, 50 per cent less energy and 50 per cent less detergent.
The technology was launched into the commercial laundry market in late 2012 with sites at Jeeves of Belgravia (London) and Watford launderers + cleaners, followed by installations in North America at Sterling Linen Services (New Hampshire), Hyatt Regency Reston (Virginia) and Crest Dry Cleaners (Virginia).
A fundraising round in late 2010 saw Xeros secure £3.5 million from an investment consortium of six backers. Its new cash allocation will be used to push through the roll out of its commercial system as well as finalising the development of a household system to replace conventional washing machines.
According to Xeros, a domestic washing machine uses approximately 50 litres of water a wash and contributes 13 per cent of household energy use. Savings using its technology, the company says, would result in consumers saving £2 billion per year as well as a reduction of 4.2 million tonnes of CO2. However it should be noted that these figures have not been tested and there are doubts on them when compared to modern energy efficient washing machines.
Xeros CEO Bill Westwater comments, ‘We have a big but simple idea: to convert the traditional world of aqueous washing to Xeros bead cleaning.
‘This fundraise represents another milestone in our journey towards making that idea a reality.’
Charles Henderson, UK equities business manager at Invesco Asset Management, adds, ‘Xeros is a pioneering British company with the potential to become a global game-changing business.
‘Through our funds, Invesco Perpetual is giving investors the opportunity to support a potential high growth green company.’
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The biggest problem that we can see with this system (apart from consumer acceptance) is as noted by Bloomberg in the video above, the convenience factor.
If people have to somehow get all these beads out of the washing if the process is not automatic and that may be a deal breaker as it’s hard enough to get a lot of people to use a conventional washing machine and detergent properly let alone one with added complexity.
In addition although Xeros state that the beads can be reused hundreds of times there is no details as yet on what the cost of replacing the beads would be or how simple this is to do.
The Xeros system may well be a revolution in the washing machine industry but until the actual machines are in the field and under scrutiny that remains to be proven.
