2023-12-25 13:00:00
“I arrived in France with the idea of returning to work in Morocco by finding a production position in a large French company. The idea of the column came to annihilate all that,” remembers Julien Jacquety, 45 years old, the founder of Coldep. The adopted Montpellier native, born in Agadir (Morocco) and arrived in France in the early 2000s, developed an innovative water treatment process: in a column several meters high, microbubbles of compressed air (a process known as d ‘airlift) are injected and drain towards the surface the gases, microparticles and other impurities which have saturated the water during the industrial process. A foam forms at the top of the column, which will be extracted. Called Vacuum AirLift, the process carried out without chemical treatment and under vacuum to improve efficiency, displays low energy consumption compared to competing solutions.
Patience and resilience
Created in 2011, Coldep first targeted the aquaculture market, without success. The company has accelerated in recent months to deliver its solution to the food industry. Its order book bodes well: following installations in Occitanie, a French dairy products giant will equip one of its sites with it. But you had to be very patient, “resilient”. The idea of treating water by airlift under vacuum in a column germinated in Julien Jacquety’s mind during his studies. Thanks to his laboratory work with Ifremer and Insa Lyon, he filed two patents. Bertrand Barrut, who is preparing a thesis on the process, joined the company a few months following its creation.
Bio express
- 2009 Master QSE project manager in aquaculture (University of Montpellier)
- 2011 Creation of Coldep
- 2023 Fundraising of 1 million euros
Despite some setbacks, the two partners did not give up. Julien Jacquety founded the Omega company in Tangier (Morocco) to provide Coldep with the components necessary for assembling the columns. But ramping up takes time, between adjustments and twists of fate. “In 2014, a client came to us with a 1 million euro project. He offered me a kickback to lower the quote price. When I refused, he broke the contract and tried to copy techno. It was a referring site. This story made us lose four years.”
In addition to a change of gear on the market to be targeted, its reluctance to bring “an institutional fund with remuneration factors” slowed down the development of the company, until a funding round, launched on the internet at the end of 2022 and materialized in November 2023. Twelve years following its launch, its solution which promises to save water and energy comes at the right time.
His projects
“Coldep is starting to come up, I can pass the baby”, breathes Julien Jacquety. There is no shortage of projects, between the development of Omega’s activity, its composites company in Tangier (Morocco), its desire to create a new company – “I have ideas, but we have to let ourselves be time for reflection to assess the risk… and his golfing dreams. “I would love to have time to play one day to earn money,” he blurted. After all, Tiger Woods is still playing, and they’re almost the same age.
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