How cleantech boss Beena Sharma grew up knowing entrepreneurship was her destiny

“A shining example of how small businesses are harnessing and driving innovation, technology and sustainability to energise the economy and inspire the next generation.”

It has only been in business since December 2022. But Scotland-based cleantech firm CCU International – which says its patented carbon capture technologies help businesses achieve their carbon reduction goals – has already been racking up a collection of prestigious accolades.

That includes earlier this month being named the best small company in the UK at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) Celebrating Small Business Awards, the fourth time in five years a Scottish firm has taken the title. The Aberdeen-based start-up also triumphed in the innovation category.

And its chief executive Beena Sharma says it was “lovely” that she and her three fellow CCU top team members Francis Doherty, Professor Peter Styring, and Dr George Dowson were all there in person to accept the prizes.

CCU International securing a range of accolades vindicates Sharma's belief that 'we were going to get the recognition in some form'. Picture: Colin Whyman.

The fact that the two awards will have jostle for space in the company’s trophy cabinet, with CCU having also this month alone been named Global StartUp of the Year and Green StartUp of the Year at the 2024 Scotland StartUp Awards, after winning the environment prize at last year’s AccelerateHER Awards, is no surprise to Sharma.

She explains how she had believed it was “inevitable that we were going to get the recognition in some form” given what she sees as CCU’s hasty, peer-overtaking progress to date as net-zero targets come into view.

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The Edinburgh-registered firm – a spin-out from the University of Sheffield – is behind technology that takes carbon dioxide (CO2) straight from industrial chimneys and exhaust stacks, at firms such as paper mills and waste-to-energy plants. It then purifies this and reuses it in industry or converts it into valued commodities, including aggregates for building materials and ingredients for household products like shampoo and toothpaste.

'We're just small – but we've got loads of ideas,' say the start-up boss. Picture: contributed.

Sharma explains that the technology has been designed to be a more energy-efficient, cost-effective, and eco-friendly option than incumbent CO2 offerings, and helping bridge the gap to when using fossil fuels is no longer needed. The UN in fact says: “Carbon capture, use, and storage can play a significant role in mitigating carbon emissions in the future, and is a key technology for the decarbonisation of the energy sector in the long term.”

CCU in March of this year announced a tie-up with the £5 million Flue2Chem project (which is supported by the UK Government through Innovate UK) with the aim of reaching net-zero goals in manufacturing chemistry-based products. The project partners include industry giants BASF, Johnson Matthey, Tata Steel, and Unilever, and Carbon Capture and Utilisation International, and the first critical stage of the project involved capturing biogenic carbon from the flue gas emissions at the Holmen Iggesund Paperboard Mill in Cumbria.

The CCU CEO at the time said: "This project highlights the importance of collaboration, and we look forward to deploying the technology in the coming months to a second emitter site in Scotland."

Sharma can trace her route to co-founding and leading the business back to her father coming to the UK from Bangladesh and setting up businesses in the rag trade. However, after he died when the CCU boss was very young, money in her London household, growing up with several siblings, was tight.

“It was a struggle. And we just thought it was the norm. I was the first one in my family to push through and say, ‘I'm going to work hard, I'm going to earn some money, and I'm going to get myself through university’. So I did.” She then went into the oil and gas industry, which included stints in Nigeria and Norway, and after returning to the UK, she and her husband moved to Aberdeen.

“I decided that I didn't want to work for an employer any more. And I think I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, because I was inspired by what my dad had achieved coming to the UK.”

Having been bitten by the business-founder bug (“they say once you've got the bug, you can't go back”), her path eventually crossed with that of Professor Styring, the potential to commercialise his carbon capture technology making itself highly apparent, and, now, she says, vindicated after meeting naysayers along the way.

She welcomes the advantages offered by the Scottish ecosystem too. The start-up was one of ten pioneering Scottish climate tech companies invited to London last summer to participate in an investor showcase hosted by Scottish Enterprise. A report published last year found that Scotland’s climate tech sector generates more than £15 billion a year, with around 30,000 staff. The analysis by the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute that was commissioned by Scottish Enterprise said almost 600 companies that use technology to help tackle climate change are registered or headquartered in Scotland.

CCU has also garnered support from organisations Scottish Development International as it eyes global growth. It has embarked on its first international project, in Hong Kong, and sees hay to be made in the US, Middle East, and developing nations, for example – also citing Poland as a major burner of coal. “We always say carbon has no borders, at the end of the day.”

Sharma, who is also a co-founder of Women in New Energy that aims to foster the “critical role women have in shaping the future of the energy sector”, says the firm wants to eventually be right the way across the value chain, “we want to be providing an end-to-end solution for our clients”.

It has been raising investment, which “will enable us to deliver the projects to our clients that we do have. And then we will go to a much bigger raise to then push out massively, particularly in the US and other areas. We're just small – but we've got loads of ideas.”