Mirico

Mirico, founded in 2015, is a spin-out from the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The company is headquartered at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, UK. The current CEO is Bob Flint, who brings experience from BP and BAE Systems. The company has raised a total of $10.9M over six funding rounds, with investors including Shell Ventures, New Climate Ventures, and Longwall Ventures. Mirico has developed a distinctive gas sensing system based on a patented laser technology called Laser Dispersion Spectroscopy (LDS). This technology was originally invented at the RAL Space lab. Unlike traditional methods that measure optical power, LDS analyzes the phase of light, which makes it more resilient to signal loss from factors like fog, rain, or dust. This allows for continuous, real-time monitoring of emissions across entire industrial sites, covering wide areas of up to 400 meters with a single instrument. The system can detect and quantify various hazardous and greenhouse gases, including methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, nitrous oxide, and ammonia, with parts-per-billion sensitivity. The company's primary product combines this advanced sensor with a proprietary cloud analytics platform, MIRICO CLOUD. This platform provides clients with real-time visualization of emissions data, allowing them to detect, locate, and quantify leaks across their facilities. The system scans a site every few minutes and provides automatic alerts for anomalous events, enabling operators to address issues promptly, reduce downtime, and minimize their environmental footprint. This continuous monitoring contrasts with intermittent survey-based methods like drones or satellites, which can miss significant emission events. Mirico primarily serves clients in the oil and gas, agriculture, waste, and energy sectors. The company has collaborated extensively with Shell, testing and validating its technology at a gas processing site, which led to an investment from Shell Ventures. The business model appears to be a combination of selling its high-precision instruments and providing access to its data analytics platform as a service. This helps companies meet regulatory requirements, achieve net-zero targets, and support global initiatives like the UN's Global Methane Pledge. Keywords: emissions monitoring, greenhouse gas detection, methane quantification, laser dispersion spectroscopy, real-time gas analysis, continuous emissions monitoring systems, fugitive emissions, climate tech, industrial site monitoring, environmental sensing, net-zero solutions, oil and gas emissions, agricultural emissions, air quality monitoring, data analytics platform, STFC spin-out, Shell Ventures, proprietary sensor technology, wide-area monitoring