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Antwerp stands out due to its diverse range of top talent from across the globe, aspiring to be a Top 10 European scale-up city. Over the next five years, Stad Antwerpen – our main partner for Get in the Ring Antwerp – has pledged to help local startups develop into scale-ups. By offering the value proposition of helping scale the development of start-ups into scale-ups, we are pleased to report that Get in the Ring Antwerp 2020 attracted a variety of diverse highly innovative businesses and creative solutions that are creating tangible impact in this region.
Get in the Ring Antwerp is part of the Open Theme with main topics on Health; Smart Cities, Mobility & Logistics; Energy Transition & Cleantech; and Smart Industry. From hundreds of applications, we shortlisted the six most promising startups from Antwerp. However, there can be only one winner. Following intense jury deliberations and after an exciting public voting campaign where over 900+ people expressed their preferences, Qpinch was crowned the winner of Get in the Ring Antwerp!
Qpinch, led by Wouter Ducheyne and Christian Heeren, are pioneers in industrial heat pump technology. Their radical innovation is applicable across all industries and can make industrial processes up to 50% more energy efficient, bringing substantial cash savings and emission reductions. Taking inspiration from the energy system of living cells, Qpinch designed a heat transformer that uses a natural chemical reaction to capture waste heat and transform it into process heat.
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We’d like to thank our Champion jury members – Erwin Verstraelen, Leentje Croes, Michaël Geelhand de Merxem, Kim Luyckx and Katleen de Naeyer for their insightful deliberations. Last but not least, many congratulations to the finalists for their energetic participation and creative solutions – Disinfect Group, Dockflow, IPEE, kazi and Bao Living. Apart from the public voting campaign and virtual jury deliberations, we also included a live Q&A format between the jury and finalists to great effect. Besides providing feedback, the jury members also saw many opportunities in their network for the startups to connect with, and already even more than five proposed introductions were initiated. Imagine what is coming next!
Qpinch earns a fully-sponsored ticket to the Global Meetup 2021, where they will join the most innovative and brightest changemakers from our Global Network to solve 21st century challenges with unconventional solutions.