Changing your business strategy is a huge risk in today's market but that's what Advanced Microwave Technologies did when they happened upon IBioIC's annual conference and were introduced to this new and growing industrial biotechnology industry in Scotland.

Advanced Microwave Technologies (AMT) develops, manufactures and installs microwave equipment which treats flowing liquids at industrial scale. The patented equipment has a very wide range of applications from pasteurising drinks to pre-treating biomass. For seven of its eight years of operation to business, attempted to commercialise the technology in the food and drink sector. Whilst there had been a modest level of success in this market and new niches discovered, it became clear that a new direction was needed: Industrial Biotechnology.

AMT joined IBioIC in 2015 following their first interaction with the Centre at its inaugural conference. This was a huge success for AMT in introducing them to people whose focus was industrial biotechnology and gave CEO Stephen Roe the confidence and the information he needed to initiate a change in the direction of the company focussing now on the Industrial Biotechnology sector. AMT had known for some time that microwave technology had been applied in some IB processes, but none had been exploited at industrial-scale. The conference gave them the access to initial contacts to start seriously exploring the application of microwave volumetric heating within process engineering. This resulted in significant success for AMT signing global license deal for the pre-treatment of waste to produce energy in October of the same year.

Stephen returned to present at the 2016 IBioIC annual conference and updated the 400+ delegates on their successes in IB to date. The future looks bright for AMT who are now looking to utilise their technology for the pre-treatment of biomass and, with the continued support provided by the IBioIC team, look to explore other opportunities in the IB space.

Find out more about AMT.