Our Tenant Spotlight series celebrates the people and ideas shaping Begbroke’s community. This time, we catch up with Dr Holly Reeve, CEO and Co-Founder of HydRegen, which is transforming chemical production economics, sustainability and safety with novel biocatalyst platforms.
Can you tell us a bit about your background and what inspired you to co-found HydRegen?
I studied Chemistry at Oxford and obtained the first in-lab results for the HydRegen technologies during my undergraduate research project in the Vincent group. This led to a patent application and a paper, and sparked my interest in translating academic research into real-world applications.
During my DPhil, I further developed the science and also undertook some business, project management and leadership training, driven by a desire to deliver as much impact as I could from our work. From there, we won £3m in grant funding over 5 years, for academic research, but focused on more commercial goals – de-risking the technology towards being able to sell a product and start a company.
I knew early on that I wanted to work at the interface of science and business, but I never thought it would be co-founding a company from my own research. However, over time, we realised that there was real commercial potential and I had already prepared myself to step into the CEO role.
How would you summarise what HydRegen does and its mission?
We work in chemical manufacturing, delivering cost- and carbon-saving for chemical processes in our customers’ existing manufacturing infrastructures. At a high level, we enable our customers to switch from using precious metal catalysts in hydrogenation reactions, to using our bio-based alternative.
Alongside cost and carbon benefits, we also make cleaner chemical products. Our mission focuses on making it as easy as possible for the chemicals sector to adopt bio-based manufacturing strategies, without compromising on process intensity or efficiency.
What excites you most about your current and upcoming projects?
Our next step is to take our first processes through to manufacturing with our customers, which will effectively mean bringing the science into the real world! This will be a significant milestone and will enable the company to start scaling up.
I love that this requires our biology, chemistry and engineering teams to work together – and the feedback from our customers about how good our systems are excites us because it showcases how widely applicable our technologies can be.
What keeps you motivated in your role?
Some of the most motivating moments are seeing customers excited about what we are doing. However, I also love seeing the team pushing the boundaries and rising to new challenges. Leading high productivity start-up teams in deep tech is both challenging and rewarding, especially focusing on increasing our capabilities as individuals and, more importantly, as a team.
What is it like being based at Begbroke and how does it support HydRegen?
My favourite thing about working at Begbroke is being able to spend time with other founders – Begbroke has a lot of chemistry-focused companies, many with CEOs or senior team members that have come from academic labs. This means we often face similar challenges, so having people that are in the same position on the same site makes it a less lonely and better supported role!
Thank you to Holly for contributing to our Tenant Spotlight series. Learn more about HydRegen and their work.
