Meet Tim Moor, Christopher Bean and Nikko Patten Weinstein, - the team behind VORTÉ Technologies (VORTÉ), one of the companies in our 2021 Cohort A.
Founded in 2019, VORTÉ is a passionate group of technologists and entrepreneurs from across the world, who are collaborating to develop an innovative Clean Tech cooling system.
Initially meeting through the Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF) the shared vision of the three team members is to mitigate the human impact on climate change, helping the environment and future generations by introducing cooling technology that runs on compressed air, to replace traditional heating, cooling, and freezing applications.
The concept behind the technology was originally pitched by Tim in his EHF application, who had been sitting on the idea for 20 years.
Using a vortex tube, VORTÉ’s technology doesn’t require the use of traditional refrigerants - which are known to release potent greenhouse gasses into the environment, instead using compressed air, which results in a system that is carbon negative. The technology looks to improve efficiency of the 100-year-old vortex cooling system, and ultimately reduce the cost of the vortex tubes.
“We’re all very like-minded in our goals and all interested in trying to make a difference. We got together as a team and thought - let’s really do something here. And collectively, we’ve created this opportunity and have been working together on it for the last year and a half”.
Thanks must also be given to Leonard Hope and Professor Kiran Devade for their initial support in the VORTÉ project.
The team all come from different backgrounds, which Tim says provides a complementary set of skills with little overlap.
While the geographical distance between the team members is vast, currently being based in the UK and US, this hasn’t stopped them from becoming a tight knit team.
“We’re an eclectic group of people that work well together, understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses”.
The team sees a wide range of applications for the technology across a number of different sectors. The primary focus for now is last mile delivery for vaccine refrigeration in developing countries and once this development has progressed, focus will expand to Agritech and dairy milk cooling.
In five years’ time, Tim says they would like Vorte to be commercialised with their technology being adopted into the New Zealand Agritech space and exploring international market opportunities.
“It would be fantastic to see a fully developed system integrated into dairy sheds by early adopters. To then be able to go through pilots, compliance and then into the manufacturing phase. Supporting first dairy farmers in New Zealand and then looking to roll this out across the rest of the world”.
VORTÉ sees the future possibilities for the technology being far reaching, and would love to see the technology applied across a wider range of industries.
The possibilities are endless.
