We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been named as one of the of Ofwat’s Water Breakthrough Challenge winners.

Delivered by ChallengeWorks with Arup and Isle Utilities, the Water Breakthrough Challenge and aims to encourage initiatives that help to tackle the biggest challenges facing the water sector, such as achieving net zero, protecting natural ecosystems and reducing leakage, as well as delivering value to society.

Intelligent Gels and its partners will upscale our innovation in order to prevent tree root intrusion into the sewer network.

A new pipeline coating will be further developed in order to reduce blockages, prevent flooding and pollution events. Work is due to start Q4 2023.

On World Water Day, Future Water Association announced Intelligent Gels as the winner of the 2022 Water Dragons competition.

Supported by sponsors Hydrosave and new supporter WRc, the Dragons throughout 2022 came from investors, innovators, water companies and regulators. There were innovators from a variety of backgrounds and brought ideas from UK, Luxembourg and Canada.

Commenting on the judge’s outcome, Alastair Moseley, Water Dragon Judge Chair & Future Water Board Member said:
"All of the innovations presented to the Water Dragons judges, were high quality and all will have a part to play in the future transformation of the water sector. Choosing a winner was therefore extremely challenging but, in the end, it came down to the innovation that the judges felt was breaking new ground and doing something that hasn’t been available before."

Future Water has produced the first 'Report Card' for the water sector, focused on Pipes & Sewers and the winners presented a technology that has the capacity to transform the way we manage the performance of pipes, rising mains and sewer, and for that reason, Intelligent Gels was the winner.

Yorkshire Water and its partners Morrisons Water Services and Intelligent Gels have successfully trialled the use of gel to remove sediments from rising mains.

The trial saw gel inserted into the wastewater network and used existing pumping within the network to push it through 4km of nine-inch sewers to remove sediment and build up in rising mains.

Mark Gregory, project manager at Yorkshire Water, said: "We are always looking at innovative new technologies to help us manage our networks and make them more efficient.

This successful trial removed sediment from a large section of our network, ultimately helping to protect the pumps, extend their life, reduce the likelihood of failures and the associated customer and environmental impact that can have. This is an exciting development and one we’re looking at using further across our network."

We are pleased to announce that, as the weather warms up, it's time to unleash our gel pellet innovation. We have an elite team of anglers ready to put the new pellets through their paces in March. Watch this space for more information.

Our ERDF Prospect funded project with the Centre for Process Innovation at NetPark, Sedgefield is now near completion producing a biodegradable, temperature stable, gel fishing pellet for use in the Angling sector.

We are pleased to announced an innovation exploration with a large UK plant grower who has been growing some of the most world class plants, flowers and produce, using the most innovative techniques in the industry to supply homes and stores across the world.

We are pleased to announced that we have been awarded funding from The UK Community Renewal Fund. This is a UK Government programme for 2021/22. This aims to support people and communities most in need across the UK to pilot programmes and new approaches to prepare for the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

We are pleased to announced that, with Durham University, an award from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Durham’s Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) to support research projects undertaken as part of the Follow-on Technology Conditioning Programme.

In collaboration with Anglian Water, we successfully removed Iron, Manganese and lowered turbidity and PAH readings within an offline drinking water pipeline that has been out of service for more than 20 years.