Sensor specialists moved into the energy sector and grew their revenue many times over

Sewers and sludge are tough on measuring equipment.

But if you can crack the code and build a sensor that reliably measures in the harshest environments, there’s big potential in other industries too.

That’s exactly what SulfiLogger’s growth story shows. The Aarhus-based wastewater company invented, in 2020, a way to make real-time gas concentration sensors reliable even in extreme conditions. Then they asked themselves: who else could use this?

The answer was in the gas pipelines of Danish offshore production.

“We saw a clear opportunity in the energy sector, and through Energy Cluster Denmark we got access to a network that made our first innovation project - supported by the Danish Business Authority - possible,” says Søren Porsgaard, CEO at SulfiLogger.

In the EUDP innovation project H2SMAN, the company teamed up with Aalborg University, Pieter Mouritsen, and LIC Engineering to develop an advanced, robust hydrogen sulfide sensor aimed at operators in the Danish sector of the North Sea—and that kicked things into high gear:

“We reached the offshore cluster at exactly the right time and place. We were lucky to co-develop our product with the industry, which led to a lot of learning and progress, and backed our solution with both offshore experience and data documentation,” says Søren Porsgaard.

“At the same time, we built partnerships and contacts that we later turned into customers. It was ideal.” Since then, the hydrogen sulfide sensors have spread into other markets—like hydrogen pipelines—and the product has been further developed so it can be used across many other sectors: “We now have a strong product for H₂S measurement, and the task is really ‘just’ to sell it globally. The potential is huge,” says Søren Porsgaard. The company has been transformed.

From 10 to 35 employees

“We were a wastewater company with ten employees when we started,” says Søren Porsgaard. “Since then, we’ve completed two funding rounds, have 140 shareholders, and today we’re an energy company with 35 employees—most of whom are also shareholders—and revenue that has doubled every year,” he says, adding one development that surprised him a bit:

“We used to be a research company with a bit of production on the side. Now we’re a production company with research and development. We’re still engineers and PhDs working on an industrial high-tech product, but now we also have a sales department, a quality team, and a really strong organization across the board. Funny how a few pallet racks in a warehouse can change your self-perception,” he says.