NEREIA

Biofouling, the growth of marine organisms on ship hulls, is a $30 billion problem that drives up fuel consumption and pumps millions of tons of unnecessary CO₂ into the atmosphere. The current solution? Toxic coatings that poison our oceans.

Materials scientists Rimah and Julia are changing that with NEREIA. By combining smart chemistry with robotics, they’ve developed a biocide-free technology that keeps hulls clean without leaving a trace in the water. We spoke with the founders about their journey from "back-of-the-napkin" stress tests to building the future of sustainable shipping.

Who are you, and what does your startup do?

NEREIA is a team of two materials scientists with very different careers: Rimah chose the scientific path, doing a PhD in nanomaterials, and Julia the business path, managing product development across different industries. A technical and a commercial co-founder.

WE are working on a problem that has been around for as long as ships have: biofouling, the growth of marine organisms on ship hulls. Biofouling increases drag and thus fuel consumption and emissions. Additionally, biofouling is the main vector for invasive aquatic species that can disrupt entire ecosystems. The standard fix for biofouling are coatings that slowly release biocides, toxic chemicals, to keep organisms from settling. That works, but all those chemicals end up in the ocean. That's why NEREIA is developing a technology that keeps hulls clean without toxic discharge and without leaving a trace in the water.

What inspired your idea?

Through sailing, Julia had come across biofouling as something boat owners deal with: an annoying but manageable maintenance problem. At some point we started looking at whether the same issue existed in commercial shipping. It does, and at a completely different scale. The drag, the fuel, the emissions, the biocides ending up in the ocean - and the cost, which runs into billions every year. That got our attention.

So we started digging. We talked to people in the industry, read everything we could find, and kept following the evidence. There was no single eureka moment, the technical idea emerged gradually from that process. You could call it pattern recognition. We just kept asking why no one had solved this properly yet, and eventually the answer pointed us in a direction worth pursuing.

What problem are you solving, and why does it matter for a sustainable future?

Biofouling, the growth of marine organisms on ship hulls, is one of those problems that sounds unglamorous but has enormous consequences. A fouled hull creates drag, and drag means ships burn significantly more fuel than they need to. Across a global fleet of over 100,000 ships, that adds up to around $30 billion a year in avoidable fuel costs and 200 Mt of avoidable CO₂ emissions.

But the environmental impact doesn't stop there. Ships carry organisms from one ocean to another, species that don't belong in their new ecosystem and can seriously disrupt it. Biofouling is the primary vector for this kind of invasive species transfer.

The dominant response has been biocide-based coatings - and they work. The problem is that the chemicals they release end up in the ocean, creating a chronic pollution problem in the very environments we're trying to protect. Regulations on these substances are tightening, but clean alternatives that work across all vessel types and operational profiles simply don't exist yet. That's the gap NEREIA is addressing.

What does your business model look like? What materials, processes or systems do you use?

NEREIA develops a coating additive, a chemistry that can be integrated into existing antifouling coatings. This additive allows for the surface to be activated by an underwater robot. The surface then can destroy biofilm without using toxic biocides.

We license our technology to the established coating manufacturers who integrate it into their products and distribute it through their existing channels. That means we don't need to build manufacturing or a global sales force. We develop the technology, protect the IP, and let partners who already have the infrastructure take it to market. Same for the robots - we work with existing suppliers for that part.

How do you measure your ecological or social impact?

We focus on three things: CO₂ emissions, chemical discharge, and invasive species spread:

1. Emissions are relatively straightforward: less drag means less fuel, and less fuel means fewer emissions.

2. Biocide discharge is harder to quantify directly, but the proxy is simple: every vessel using a biocide-free coating is one less source of chronic chemical pollution in the ocean.

3. Invasive species spread is the most difficult to measure. Hull cleanliness is the best available proxy: a clean hull carries fewer organisms across ocean boundaries.

What have been your biggest challenges and what have you learned?

The biggest challenge is the technology itself. We didn't come in with a ready-made solution, we found the problem first, then worked out what a good solution would need to do, and then started developing it. That means building the technology from the ground up, which takes time.

The other challenge is that this is our first startup. We're not inexperienced people, we both have careers behind us, but founding a company is completely new territory. Fundraising, legal structures, all of that: you learn it as you go.

What helped most was accepting early that you can't cover everything yourself - and not trying to. Build a base of people who genuinely help: advisors with industry experience, mentors from programs, other founders going through the same things. They bring expertise, contacts, and perspectives that no founding team can fully have on their own. The sooner you stop trying to figure everything out alone, the faster you move.

Have there been any key turning points or lessons learned through mistakes?

Early on we were working on a different idea, also in the sustainability space. We were quite excited about it, but at some point we did a rough back-of-the-napkin calculation and realized there simply wasn't enough material in the world to make it work at the scale needed. That was a hard moment, but also a quick one. We dropped it and moved on.

The lesson: stress-test your critical assumptions early, before you go deep. You don't need sophisticated models for this: a rough calculation on a piece of paper can save you months of work in the wrong direction.

Since then we've tried to apply the same principle across everything we do. Try things, see if they work, correct quickly if they don't. So far that has served us well, we haven't had any major setbacks, which we're aware is also partly luck. But being able to accept when something doesn't work, shake it off, and change direction without losing momentum has probably helped too.

Where are you currently and what are your next steps?

We are in the middle of developing the technology, with the goal of reaching a first proof of concept later this year. In parallel we're working on funding and growing our network, both essential at this stage.

Initiatives like ClimateLaunchpad are a real help with that. The visibility, the connections, the structured environment, that's exactly what we need right now alongside the technical work.

Where do you see yourselves in five years?

Honestly, we don't know exactly where we'll be in five years and we think anyone who claims to know is probably not being fully honest. Deep tech takes time, and a lot depends on how the technology develops and how the market moves.

What we're working towards: a commercially viable product and the start of scaling up. If we get there by then, that's a success.

Any advice for other founders in sustainability?

Fail fast, learn fast. Don't be afraid of things not working, be afraid of spending too long on something before finding out it doesn't work. Test your assumptions early, and be honest with yourself about what the results tell you.

Get the team right. Complementary beats similar: you want people who cover different ground, not people who are good at the same things you are. Rimah and I work well precisely because we're very different. Everyone does what they're best at, and that makes the whole thing more efficient.

And finally: accept the loneliness. Being a founder is lonely to some extent, even with a co-founder. Everyone is ultimately responsible for their own area. That's not a problem to solve, it's just something to be aware of and make peace with.

A book, podcast, or resource that inspired you?

A book called The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. It's about customer validation, but the insight goes much further than that. The core idea is simple: people are polite, they don't want to hurt your feelings, so they won't tell you your idea is bad even if they think it is. You need to factor that into every conversation or better, design your questions so that politeness can't distort the answer. That's useful way beyond the validation phase.

Find out more about NEREIA here. Find out more about ClimateLaunchpad in Austria here.