Irish firm Novaerus isn’t just selling its air sanitisation technology to hospitals and medical centres – the bread and butter on which it built its business – anymore. With the pandemic and public knowledge increasing around the importance of clean air, its devices can now be found in elevators, restaurants, pubs and offices.

Kevin Devlin stepped down as chief executive of Novareus’s parent company WellAir earlier this year after a deal with US firm UV Innovators, but he remains a board advisor. he says the pandemic and learning around the spread of disease that has taken place over the last year have helped the company “more than double in size”.

“We would never have been able to make people so aware of airborne pathogens, in any particular market, never mind the whole world in one go. Our sales pitch is received an awful lot easier now than two years ago,” says Devlin.

With restrictions continuing to ease this month and premises reopening, opportunities are presenting themselves for air sanitisation and ventilation suppliers.

While there hasn’t been an exact air quality standard set out by government policy yet, there is a Nphet subcommittee looking into what requirements should be set for indoor air quality. Meanwhile, government guidance does indicate that ventilation has a part to play in reducing the concentration of the virus in the air. Some Irish companies are rising to the challenge.

Backed by Oyster Capital’s Bill McCabe, Dublin-based Novareus has ramped up its production to respond to a market, which Devlin says has increased ten-fold. In the past six months, the firm has grown from 45 employees to 100.

It is an example of a company with a large slice of the pie – both in Ireland and across the world. Devlin says it sells its product into 50 countries, with South Korea one of its strongest-performing. “We believe the reason is because they have been through other epidemics including Sars and Mers – so they are very sensitised to the need to remove pathogens from the air.”

The firm, which donated several of its devices to hospitals in Wuhan at the beginning of the outbreak, is also focusing on growing its presence in the US market with the recent acquisition of UV Innovators and the 2016 acquisition of Plasma Air, which uses a different technology to the Novaerus brand. “We had a small team there prior to the pandemic, but we have grown our sales team there and the US has become an important part of our business.”

In Ireland, Novaerus has sold almost 1,000 of its devices, ranging range in price from €1,500 for a small office device to up to €12,500 for the largest. It trades here through a distribution deal it started with the McGreals Group, which operates 11 pharmacies. The most popular is the middle device at €2,500.

“Between offices, pubs, restaurants, schools and some churches, we’ve almost reached 1,000. We’ve had to navigate the booms and slumps in various phases of lockdown but our first year has been successful,” says Deirdre Devitt, chief executive of Novareus at McGreals, a division of the pharmacy chain that manages the tie-up.

For example, she adds that one of the largest machines, the size of a washing machine, now operates in the Noyeks Newmans kitchen showroom in Dublin’s Ballymount industrial estate.

According to Devitt, the distribution deal came about when Killian McGreal, the managing director of the McGreal’s pharmacy chain, was looking for a device to help protect his staff and customers across the 11-store chain: “He came across that there was a distributor for hospitals and care homes but no one else distributing in Ireland.”

The group jumped at the opportunity and brought Devitt onboard, who has a strong network in the hospitality sector given her background as the first female chair of the Licensed Vintners Association between 2016 and 2017.

“With publicans and restaurateurs, we have seen a huge increase in demand in the last couple of weeks for the devices. They have the information they need and the date for reopening. It was the same with a lot of offices and retail – when they had information they could handle and plan, they pushed the button on the devices,” Devitt says.

“The post-Covid era cannot go into another winter where people are wearing masks and businesses can only use half their spaces with social distancing.”

Pat Smith, Crystal Clean Air

There are other companies vying for a place on the field. Pat Smith, managing director of Local Power in Co Meath, which focuses on rooftop solar energy projects and the installation of electrical vehicle charging stations, has taken a distribution deal with a Northern Irish firm, Ilimex. The Ballycastle company has developed technology with Ulster University that uses UV light to eliminate pathogens from the air.

Demonstrating Ilimex’s technology at The Salthouse Hotel in Ballycastle, Co Antrim are hotel director Carl McGarrity; Ilimex CEO Gerry Corrigan; , Ulster University’s Dr Patrick Dunlop and Dr Vicky Kell; and Ilimex CTO Richard McCauley.

Selling it under the brand Crystal Clean Air, Smith says the technology completely cleans a room of air five times an hour, which means every ten to twelve minutes the air in the room is sterilised. The units vary in price from €600 to €4,500 depending on the size of the room. “When we were researching the marketplace, we felt that this product is more expensive – the maintenance of it is low – but we wanted something with provenance,” he said.

He would like to see some guidance or a standard on indoor air quality coming from the government so those working in the hospitality sector – and elsewhere – will know how to protect their staff correctly.

 “I really think the government should have a decent grant to assist people to make their premises safe because the post-Covid era cannot go into another winter where people are wearing masks and businesses can only use half their spaces with social distancing,” he adds.

From nice-to-have to need-to-have

Other companies are focusing on ventilation systems, rather than sanitation or disinfection units. Aidan McDonnell, managing director of energy monitoring firm Acutrace, says conversations have changed from energy consumption to air quality in recent months.

His firm had been monitoring carbon dioxide levels and air quality in buildings prior to Covid-19 as part of its services but expects the business to increase in the coming months.

“12 months ago, this was a nice-to-have situation. We were measuring energy consumption in buildings, and we could bolt on air temperature and rainwater harvesting features that were part of the wellness within the building,” McDonnell says. “But since lockdown, when we have been talking to our existing customers and new clients about air quality, they are jumping on it and asking for more details.”

He says that the company will certainly be making it a larger feature of its systems going forward.

Players like 12-man Galway-based outfit Partel, who have been focusing on energy efficiency in buildings and ventilation, have seen an 80 per cent spike in queries in May this year regarding the Lunos system they install, compared to the same month last year.

“We’re the main distributors in Ireland and the UK of Lunos, which is a decentralised mechanical ventilation system – so it provides fresh air but it also recovers heat from that air to reduce your energy bills,” says the firm’s technical consultant, Dara McGowan. By decentralised, he means it does not have to be incorporated into a structural design but can be fitted out to an existing build.

The company’s client base is mostly among schools that are looking to upgrade previous systems or install one for the first time. McGowan says the Department of Education’s guidance around ventilation is to keep windows and doors open in classrooms, which he says from a comfort and energy point is fruitless. “It’s just not very realistic going into the winter to keep doors and windows open.”

AtmosQ is a start-up that launched two years ago and is currently testing technology for indoor air quality monitoring. “Prior to Covid-19, good indoor air quality was considered a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have, and that has radically changed,” founder Diane Tangney explains.  

Tangney makes the point that air quality has in many ways been at loggerheads with the principles of energy efficiency – standards set for having an energy-efficient building centre around the exclusion of draughts and air leaks, which impact the amount of fresh air that can enter a building.

Her start-up aims to remedy this by monitoring how efficient a building is energy-wise while also remaining ventilated. “Better indoor air requires increased energy consumption. And that is what I call the conflicting demands. It’s kind of where the green building movement and the healthy building movement are clashing.”

The company has a patent and proof of concept and is now running trials of its product in a workplace, which Tangney does not wish to disclose.

Since Covid-19 hit, she says organisations have been changing their priorities around air quality. “I’ve been speaking to facility managers and operation managers that say staff are asking them about ventilation rates and technical questions around air changes per hour, which would have been unheard of pre-pandemic.”

She also explains that air quality issues were dealt with by the operations department of organisations, but it has since moved to a human resources issue. “It’s a people issue and not a ventilation issue.”

“We have learned and been educated on our cough etiquette and ventilation so things that we had accepted as a way of life – like contracting colds and flus in a work setting – don’t need to happen now.”

On top of the recuperation of sick days for employers, Tangney refers to research published by Harvard Business Review showing that $40 spent on indoor air quality monitoring can yield $6,500 extra per person in productivity, saying high air quality increases people’s energy.

“Regulation has been pushing everything to be airtight because of heat loss.”

Architect Sarah O’Dwyer

Architect David Petherbridge is a director at RKD, which has worked on projects including One Microsoft Place in Leopardstown and LinkedIn’s EMEA headquarters at Wilton Place in Dublin 2. He says most workplaces he consults are looking into repurposing their office layouts with a view of returning to the office by the third quarter of the year.

Within that, repurposing air ventilation is being considered but there is a challenge around the pipe fan coil systems, which are the air conditioning units used in most office spaces and only create 1.2 air changes per hour. His clients are buying free-standing air sanitisation units instead.

“Medical research from hospitals and operating theatres shows that if you can change air in a room five times you can purge it of any virus – but you can’t redesign air conditioning units because they are finely balanced, so our clients are using free-standing circulation units. They are made by Dyson and they cost about €4,000 a pop,” Petherbridge explains.

While larger office providers and tech companies can afford to dish out some cash on these units, it will be tougher for those in the hospitality sector who have had a challenging time over the past 15 months. Petherbridge thinks the sector will probably adjust to the outdoor eating model throughout the summer and build up income to invest in indoor facilities down the line.

“Most pubs and restaurants don’t have sophisticated ventilation systems as it is, so the recirculation units will probably work well for them also,” Petherbridge says.

Sarah O’Dwyer, who is an architect at Kenneth Hennesy Architects and the chair of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland sustainability group, says she has not seen a huge amount of change to designs surrounding ventilation taking place in the past few months.

She says there is an increased awareness around ventilation standards but many of the major office buildings and tech companies in Ireland have already been aware of environmental assessment schemes such as LEED that require high levels of natural ventilation in buildings. They would have been striving to meet these prior to the pandemic.

O’Dwyer explains that natural ventilation beats mechanical every time, but there has been “tension” between ventilation and energy performance. “Regulation has been pushing everything to be airtight because of heat loss. Our buildings had been relying on cracks around windows as an extra form of ventilation.”

When it comes to pubs or restaurants, which may occupy smaller and older premises, O’Dwyer says she would advise an audit to figure out if there are any simple ways new openings can be made in the building or if a ventilation system could be fitted.

“Some of them weren’t designed with ventilation in mind and some of them would be historic buildings so they are protected structures, which adds another layer of complexity,” the architect says. “But it’s not impossible to provide the additional ventilation required.”