A Place where technology meets capital

At a time that can only be described as extremely difficult for launching of new businesses, particularly in the building industry, it is encouraging that five years of effort can still pay off.

What makes the success of this product, a coating for roofs, is to make them more thermally efficient. Even more impressive is breaking into a capital intensive market which brings an added challenge of needing sufficient capital to handle the time delays.

Director of Lehmann Pacific Solar Pty Ltd, Rex Lehmann says: “For a capital intensive market you need to factor this into your business planning, unlike a service.”
“Managing the long lead times for initial orders is difficult initially. Customers don’t come to you with an open cheque book.”

SkyCool™ is a novel, patented energy saving selective surface coating that saves an impressive amount of energy as well as capital costs.

Three years ago Warren Centre founding member, Myles McLachlan, joined forces with Rex and Edward Lehmann to bring Skycool to market.

Myles brought to the company, extensive experience in capital raising, commercialisation and bringing new products to market.

“It is a privilege to be chairperson of Lehmann Pacific Solar and to bring this Australian invention to commercial success.

“Our strategy is to consolidate the Australian market and then develop the product’s huge export potential, thus bringing substantial benefits to Australia.

“We are very aware that SkyCool not only leads to large financial savings, but also delivers important environmental benefits through reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases,” Myles says.

The coating is applied to metal roofed industrial and commercial buildings, such as warehouses, shopping centres, factories, schools and hospitals. SkyCool virtually eliminates the solar heat load, which causes about 80 per cent of the overheating of metal roofed buildings. The result is a cool and pleasant interior. This delivers big savings in the annual cost of air-conditioning and can save around 30 per cent of the capital of new plant as the buildings require smaller air-conditioning units.

Research and development of the product included testing by the University of Technology, Sydney in conjunction with the Queensland University of Technology. The NSW Department of School Education and a major national supermarket group have conducted successful trials. The tests included installing separate air-conditioning power meters in two nearby supermarkets, one with and one without the SkyCool roof coating.

The excellent results in power saving are illustrated in the figure.

From mid spring 2002 onwards, the store with the SkyCool coating cut its air-conditioning consumption by 50 per cent and increased that level of saving in the second year. A small increase in heating power during the first winter was dramatically off-set by the savings throughout the remainder of the year.

“SkyCool beat by a long margin other products under trial by the supermarket,” Director of Lehmann Pacific Solar Pty Ltd, Rex Lehmann says.

To fund commercialisation of the product, AusIndustry was approached.

“Shortly after we applied, AusIndustry ran out of funding for that year.

“We then sought venture capital and Pacific Capital brought us together with an investor.”

There was also Rex’s personal commitment to the future of the company through personally raising capital.

An unexpected challenge was the influence of the weather when marketing the product at exhibitions, through trade magazines and to architects and builders.

Rex was surprised at the amount of influence the seasons play.

“In winter it was very difficult to build interest. Now summer weather has arrived, activity has increased dramatically,” Rex says.

The marketing strategy concentrates on the bottom line savings the product brings by eliminating the solar load and saving energy.

“No other product can achieve these savings and this approach helps avoid the attitude that it is just another paint.”

Another unexpected obstacle is the attitude of councils, as many are opposed to the colour white. The product is available in white or white.

“Until now we have tended to avoid the domestic market as SkyCool is not an aesthetic product, it’s a functional material.”

The potential market is huge. Rex estimates that in Australia there are between 350 to 400 million square metres of built metal roofs. Plus there is the current rate of 4 to 5 million square metres built every year.

“Expect to see a lot of white metal roofs in future,” he predicts.

While this technology did not find its funding on Aussie Opportunities, it is typical of the opportunities that are highlighted on the Aussie Opportunities web-based matching service. Pacific Capital and the Australian Institute for Commercialisation created Aussie Opportunities as an online showcase for matching Australian research projects with investors and partners. If you have a project that you would like to be on the site please contact Michael O'Neill at Pacific Capital on michael@pacificcapital.com.au or (02) 9247 7126.

Overall savings for the complete trial period of the roof coating SkyCool amounted to 46%, compared to another supermarket which was uncoated. As the results show, provided by the supermarket operators, the SkyCool coated building (yellow line) returned a 50% reduction in air conditioning power consumption for most of the year, compared to the standard building (red line).

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