Thanks to the Enterprise Europe Network, German SME Enviplan is now helping Egyptian marble companies turn out better-quality stone. “Some of the best ideas come from small companies,” says Mohamed Samy, a Network expert from Egypt’s Ministry of Trade and Industry. “This is one of the strengths of the Network: supporting companies with technological innovations, and then getting those innovations to where they are needed most.”

Enviplan’s advanced microflotation technology generates microscopic bubbles that rise to the surface and act as a magnet for pollutants, which can then be easily removed. It recently introduced its breakthrough to Egyptian government officials visiting the Network branch at Zenit GmbH in Germany.

Drawing on experience in other sectors, Enviplan showed how microflotation could slash marble production costs, reduce pollution and boost the value of the finished product by making the surface smoother.

Following Network mediation, representatives from the Egyptian government-run Marble and Quarries Technology invited Enviplan to build a pilot plant in Cairo to demonstrate to local firms how the technology works in practice. And as Sabrina Wodrich, a Network consultant at Zenit, noted: “You could not ask for a better introduction to a new market than that”.

Meanwhile, Enviplan has also signed a technology-transfer agreement with Alexandria-based marble and granite maker Alex Tiles, in what it hopes will the first of many new partnerships there.

“We would never have been able to conclude these deals were it not for the Enterprise Europe Network,” says Roland Damman, Enviplan’s CEO.