ICL Haifa, MIGAL seal agreement on wastewater treatment technology

ICL Haifa and MIGAL Galilee Research Institute have signed a license agreement to adopt proprietary technology in wastewater treatment.

The agreement will allow ICL Haifa, a subsidiary of global supplier to the agriculture, processed food, and engineered materials markets ICL (NYSE and TASE: ICL), to develop, manufacture, and sell reagents developed by MIGAL for treating wastewater. It will deploy the technology in agricultural products manufactured for its existing and future customers.

The partnership between ICL Haifa and MIGAL comes on the heels of the completion of the latter’s pilot program aimed at developing a method and unique component to help cut wastewater pollution levels to allow the reuse of water for irrigation.

MIGAL conducted the year-long pilot program in conjunction with ICL's open innovation arm, ICL Innovation Ltd, which was established in 2014 to speed up ICL's development of sustainable new products and processes and provide solutions for major global challenges. ICL Innovation has received more than 500 submissions for collaboration to date, and out of these is currently working on 10 projects. 

Through the Open Innovation approach, ICL maximizes the benefits brought about by collaborating with scientists and entrepreneurs around the world toward boosting company growth. Its Open Innovation "Accelerator" augments the R&D organization, which comprises about 500 employees spread across the IMI/TAMI Research Institute located in Haifa, Israel, and other facilities in Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, and the US.

MIGAL leverages expertise in plant-based platforms, wastewater treatment technologies, clinical nutrition, precision agriculture, therapeutic molecules, chemical extractions, vaccine technologies, and computational chemistry. The interdisciplinary applied research conducted by the internationally recognized center for agro-innovation and metabolic engineering combines expertise in agro-technology, computer science and big data analysis, metabolic engineering, environmental and plant sciences, chemistry, biochemistry, and microbiology.