ALBON Quarterly Newsletter – September 2026

It's been a big quarter for ALBON. We've agreed on our first paid pilot with a commercial dairy, and our first module goes onto the farm this December.

We've also joined UNSW Founders' Climate 10x Accelerator, with investment from UNSW and TRaCE (Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy). We received $50,000 in matched funding from the NSW Government's MVP Ventures Program, and picked up a Merit Award at the National iAwards.

Here's the full update, from what the lab is telling us to how the team is getting the system ready for the farm.

Co-Founders John Phipps, Dr Andrea Gonzalez and Tom Bessell with the four stages of ALBON's process

📷 Co-Founders John Phipps (left), Dr Andrea Gonzalez (centre) and Tom Bessell (right) with the four stages of ALBON's process: raw wastewater, algae, treated water and biochar (UNSW Founders, September 2026)

First Paid Dairy Pilot Confirmed

Last December, we shared that a commercial dairy had signed a letter of intent to trial ALBON's system. We've now agreed to a paid pilot with them, and deployment starts this December.

Like many dairies, the farm is upgrading to separate out solids, but dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus remain and limit irrigation reuse. That's what our system removes.

We're rolling it out in phases, starting with a smaller module and scaling up to a full system in a 10ft shipping container in 2027. That way we prove it on the farm's own wastewater before adding capacity, which is how we'd approach any new site.

We'll measure nutrient removal (tested weekly by an independent lab), irrigation suitability, and energy and chemical use.

Get Involved

Run a dairy, meat or food processing site? We're taking expressions of interest for 2027 deployments.

Our SAFE round has closed. Thank you to everyone who backed us. Investors interested in what's next can reach us at info@albon.com.au.

Get in touch

What the Lab Is Telling Us

We've now completed 14 lab trials. In the successful trials that removed more than half the nitrogen and phosphorus, removal averaged 82% for nitrogen and 88% for phosphorus. The trials that fell short were just as valuable: they showed us that carbon is the key ingredient, and shaped the design changes that followed.

Our best result so far came on full-strength dairy effluent with added carbon, removing 99% of nitrogen and 95% of phosphorus in seven days.

Our patent-pending system design is also outperforming our earlier photobioreactor. On the same synthetic wastewater, it removed slightly more nitrogen and far more phosphorus in half the time. It hasn't been tested on real dairy effluent yet, so that's the next step once we finalise the design.

Nitrogen and phosphorus are usually what get a site into trouble with its discharge limits. Most facilities manage them with ageing lagoons, chemical dosing and paying to have sludge trucked away. Our modular system sits alongside existing infrastructure, removes the nutrients with fewer chemicals, and combines the harvested algae and bacteria with the site's existing sludge to make biochar.

📷 Co-Founder John Phipps in the lab with algae flasks

📷 Co-Founder Dr Andrea Gonzalez in the ALBON office, with ultrawide LG monitors

Backed by TRaCE and UNSW Founders

We have joined UNSW Founders' Climate 10x Accelerator, with UNSW & TRaCE investing in ALBON through the program. With our first system about to go onto a farm, it's great fuel for product development and implementation.

NSW Government MVP Ventures Funding

ALBON received $50,000 in matched funding through the NSW Government's MVP Ventures Program, run by Investment NSW. It's helping fund our lab validation and scale-up work ahead of the dairy pilot.

LG Sponsorship

Thank you to LG Business Australia & New Zealand for giving our Sydney Knowledge Hub office eight 34-inch UltraWide curved monitors. More screen space means faster design work, and it's a big upgrade from the second-hand screens we started with.

Engineering the System

While the lab team has been refining the process, our engineers have been turning it into something that can run day-to-day on a farm.

Led by Principal Engineer Will Wulff, the team has been through several rounds of prototyping on the reactor, controls and electrical systems. Jack Gowing now leads the mechanical build and Sam McKid the electrical, both having started with us as placement interns.

We've also built software that tracks the system's performance in real time, and the team is now getting the first module ready for the farm in December.

Thanks to UNSW for 3D printing reactor parts, and to the University of Sydney's ThinkSpace for supporting the prototyping that keeps the build moving.

📷 Lead Electrical Engineer Sam McKid fine-tuning our benchtop reactor

Additional Recognition This Quarter

🎓Andrea was awarded a Westpac Accelerator Scholarship ($20,000) through UNSW Founders
🌍Tom was selected as a One Young World Scholar 2026 through the Audi Environmental Foundation
💧Andrea presented “Algae: The Yin and the Yang” to the Australian Water Association's Water Quality Specialist Network
🐟Tom pitched at the YPO Sydney Shark Tank event at Sydney Aquarium
And a few more wins we can't announce just yet!

📷 Co-Founder Tom Bessell pitches at the YPO Shark Tank event, July 2026

National iAwards Merit Award

In August, ALBON received a Merit Award in the Sustainability & Environmental category at the National iAwards. That made us eligible for the Asia-Pacific ICT Alliance Awards in Jakarta, but with our first deployment landing in December, we've decided to keep our focus on the farm this year.

Resourcing the World at Tech23

John, Tom and Andrea spent two days at Cicada Innovations' Tech23 in September, alongside the 22 other deep-tech startups in this year's cohort.

John spoke on the “Resourcing the World” panel. His view is that circular systems will increasingly be built because the economics leave little choice, not only because they're better for the planet.

Water is a good example. Once our system has removed the nutrients and disinfected the water, the site can reuse it for irrigation and farm operations instead of discharging it. Every litre reused is a litre it doesn't have to buy, or pay to get rid of.

But water is only half of it. The nitrogen and phosphorus we remove don't just disappear. Our algae absorb them as they grow. We then combine that algae with the site's existing sludge, which would normally cost money to truck away, and turn the mix into biochar. Two waste streams become a stable, carbon-rich material that holds onto nutrients and can go back on the paddocks or be sold.

📷 Co-Founder John Phipps speaks at Cicada Innovations' Tech23, September 2026

Thank you for being part of our journey. A lot of what's in this update traces back to people outside our team. Everyone who has advised and mentored us along the way has shaped how we think about the business, and the agri-food processors who've shared feedback and data have shaped the system itself. Getting to our first paid pilot wouldn't have happened without you.

If you or someone in your network is connected to agriculture, wastewater, research, commercial pilots, or climate-tech investment, we would love to connect and explore potential collaboration.

You can:

💬Book a chat with our team here
🌿Follow our progress on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn for more updates
📩Share this newsletter with anyone who'd like to support clean water innovation

Every introduction helps us get cleaner water back into farms and waterways sooner.

Kind regards,
Tom, John, Andrea & the ALBON team