Ex-Apprentice star Syed Ahmed has raised £1.5m through a consortium of high angel investors and the Technology Strategy Board to launch the world’s first eco hand dryer through his green technology firm, Savortex.
The technology gathers data while in use and feeds information about energy usage and possible cost-savings back to the customer through an online portal.
Angel investor John Calvert, a management consultant, is behind £600,000 of the growth capital and was in the form of a £100,000 grant from the Technology Strategy Board.
The investment will be used to develop the first product in an upcoming range of smart eco hand dryers. The EcoCurve Smart Dryer has the “lowest carbon footprint per dry,” claims Ahmed. This would make it the world’s greenest hand dryer.
The dryer is currently being trialled by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) across 50 sites, with predicted savings of £30,000 and 14 tonnes of waste per building, per year. Other clients include British Airways, Marriott and McDonalds.
Ahmed said: “There are 70 million washrooms globally. A massive 80per cent are still using damaging and very expensive paper towels, so you can see why we wanted to build something that disrupts this very inefficient market.
