Antwerp, Belgium, June 2022 – Aloxy, a spin-off of imec and University of Antwerp, that develops plug-and-play Internet of Things technology for the chemical and energy industry, closes its next funding round. A consortium of investors, Industrya, QBIC II, Innovation Fund, imec.istart and the University of Antwerp have joined forces with the team to invest € 3.8 million in the scale up and further growth of Aloxy. In the coming year, the company will focus on growing its sales activities as well as expanding the product range and further developing the Aloxy Industrial IoT Hub platform.

With this new round, Aloxy welcomes Industrya as a new investor who led this round. Industrya is a hands-on investment fund that operates exclusively in the industry 4.0, energy and new materials sectors.

“We have been impressed by the quality of the team and the solution developed by Aloxy. The market potential is large. The precise monitoring of valves is a crucial safety element for the oil & gas sector as well as other manufacturing and industrial sectors. Aloxy was therefore a logical investment for Industrya and we are looking forward to supporting the company in its international development.” - Alexandre Braconnier, chief investment officer Industrya -

Multiple existing investors increase their stake. They have been following the development of Aloxy closely and believe in its potential and the role they can play in the market.

“As an investor from the very start, we are happy to continue supporting the development of Aloxy. Over the last years, the company has succeeded in further developing technology from academic research to commercial products, in a market with very high standards and high requirements for new (digital) technologies. A strong technology basis and persistence have allowed Aloxy to create the initial commercial traction, which will be further accelerated with the current investment round.” - Sofie Baeten, CEO Qbic II Fund-

Aloxy was launched in 2018 to build specific solutions for the chemical and energy industry to facilitate the transition to “Industry 4.0”. Aloxy successfully developed a unique and patented manual valve monitoring solution leveraging wireless LPWAN communication technology such as LoRaWAN. The current solution includes a valve sensor and an industrial IoT platform, the “Aloxy IIoT Hub”, to manage the fleet of IoT devices, monitor and optimize the network connectivity, and feed the captured sensor data to the customers’ systems.

The industry 4.0 transition is in full motion and more and more industry majors are investing in IoT and wireless network infrastructures. The initial demand came from Europe, whereas the USA followed rapidly and demand in other regions such as South America and Asia is increasing.

“To speed up the digitization of the chemical industry, it is important to develop safe, robust, and affordable digital solutions for existing plants. The Aloxy manual valve solution meets these requirements and is one of the few Ex-certified IoT sensors already available on the market. Because of its ease of installation, the wireless Aloxy technology offers a costeffective solution to reliably monitor the position of manual valves. After a thorough evaluation and joint iterative development, the Aloxy solution is available to all BASF sites worldwide.” - Philip Buskens, VP Verbund Site Development & Digitalization BASF -

Aloxy’s manual valve monitoring solution is an important driver for the industry 4.0 transition as today real-time manual valve data is only scarcely available. Similarly, the Aloxy IIoT Hub plays a crucial role in the deployment of reliable and scalable infrastructure. Both in onboarding new sensors and monitoring their operation, the IIoT Hub offers value.

The digitization of the chemical and energy industry can be further accelerated when more Ex-certified (explosion-proof) wireless sensors hit the market. Aloxy is currently prototyping a new device, the Aloxy.Connect, to connect PT100 temperature and 4-20 mA probes.

Scale up

The new funds raised will be used to continue and accelerate Aloxy’s growth.

“While we continue to expand the country-specific certifications of our valve sensor and focus on pursuing ISO27001 certification, we are preparing the organization for accelerated growth. Our strategy is built on three pillars: increasing the industry-wide adoption of our valve monitoring solution, scale-up the “Aloxy IIoT Hub” platform and launch new Ex-certified sensors.” - Jan Coppens, CEO Aloxy -

After the recent expansion into North America, both the European and US sales teams will be increased to further grow the awareness of the valve monitoring solution.

The Aloxy.Connect prototype is currently being tested in the field in non-Ex environments and will be further finalized including the Ex-certification, mobile app development and the integration with different types of probes.

In addition, the “Aloxy IIoT Hub” platform is being expanded with third party sensors to become the central IoT management platform for our customers’ entire sensor fleet over different network protocols.

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