Electrical engineer, Greg Moore, first had the idea for a smart way to clean beverage dispensing lines eight years ago.
Since then he has steadily worked his way through developing, prototyping and patenting his system and using personal contacts to get a hearing from brewers around the world, 14 of whom agreed to trial a unit on a long-term basis.
Moore says its robustness is what makes his recently launched Glanola system different to others on the market. “Our system safely and effectively pumps a caustic solution at pressure whilst avoiding the degeneration of moving parts and pumps – a common problem with other existing units,” he says.
While Moore has spent most of his career in the IT sector, during a two-year stint as a pub owner he found the manual method of line cleaning time consuming and outdated. As clean lines are critical for both taste quality and hygiene, Moore felt there was significant potential worldwide for an invention that could clean the lines to a very high standard within nine minutes.
“Basically we’ve come up with a unique way of mixing a corrosive chemical with water,” he says. “The basis of this technology is a method to ‘starve’ the main pump of water, which restricts the flow and pressure intermittently and allowing the introduction of the detergent at the last stage of the unit so that it by-passes all of the other essential components. This means that the corrosive detergent never comes into contact with the main water pump or other monitoring instruments and therefore won’t cause damage that would require refurbishment.”
Moore estimates that there are over a million potential customers globally for Glanola in the pub trade alone, while the technology also has applications in other industries such as pharma and dairy.
Proving the product
"It has taken quite a while to bring the technology to the market on a fully commercial basis because proving the robustness of our technology was central to our offering. This meant having units on test over a number of years," he says.
"I have been working full-time on the project for the last two years, getting everything market-ready. We have now reached the point at which all the testing and verification has been completed, funding is in place and we have also been offered support by Enterprise Ireland under its High Potential Start Up Programme."
Glanola is based in Dublin where it employs five people and it has three people in its US office. The company's primary markets are the US, Germany and the UK and it is currently in discussion to license its technology in the UAE, Australia, Malaysia, and Russia.
Olive Keogh
