Field Notes • No. 4 • August 2026

A first for the continent

August was the month a lot of what we have been building toward finally came together. We completed our first 150L pilot run, we crossed into a real production scale, our agricultural trials moved forward, and we picked up two more results in the competitions.

One thing stands above the rest, so we will start there.

The milestone

The first biosurfactant pilot on the continent

We have completed the first pilot scale demonstration of fermentative biosurfactant production on the African continent. As far as we are aware, no one on the continent has taken a fermentative biosurfactant process to this scale before, and doing it ourselves, here, is something we are very proud of.

What matters just as much is how the process behaved. Across every step up in scale, from 5L to 20L and now to 150L, our performance has held. We reached the titres we were aiming for at pilot scale, and they stayed just as competitive as they were in the smaller runs. A process that holds its performance as it scales is exactly what you want to see, and it is not something you can take for granted.

We then took the results from the pilot and fed them into our detailed techno-economic model. Even with real pilot data in place of our earlier assumptions, the economics of the process have held up, and it remains commercially feasible at scale.

We are now going to keep running at this scale. The next job is to show that the process is repeatable and robust, run after run, which is what turns a successful demonstration into something you can build a business on.

André and Jody with the 150L pilot bioreactor, after our first pilot run.

Out in the market

We are now producing at 500kg a year

Reaching pilot scale has put our production capacity at 500kg a year. That may sound modest, but it is a real threshold for us. It is enough to fulfil our first commercial orders with our existing partners, and it is enough to open up offtake discussions with new ones from the position of actually being able to supply.

On the back of that, we have started partnership discussions with several of the leading chemical distributors in the South African market. The aim is to build up offtake agreements quickly, so the demand is lined up and waiting as we move toward our next scale of production.

In the field

Our trials with SoilScopes are coming along

On the agricultural side, our trials with SoilScopes are progressing well. We had the chance to visit SoilScopes, led by Wesley Soules, and to see our trials with RegenZ in action.

Our RegenZ trial in the greenhouse, cabbage and wheat under evaluation.

It was good to see the work up close, and everything is on track. We should start seeing results in the next month or two. If they come back the way we hope, they should unlock our first offtake to an agrochem customer.

On the side

Two more results in the competitions

We also had a good run in a couple of competitions this month.

We came second in the ClimateLaunchpad African Regional Finals, which means Jody will be representing ReSurfify at the global final in Singapore in October. To be recognised among the top two early stage climate tech startups in Africa is something we are genuinely proud of.

We also won the regional prize at the FNF GreenPitch Challenge, sponsored by LaunchLab.

That was August. The pilot behind us, a real production scale in front of us, and plenty still to do. We will let you know how the repeat runs go, and what comes back from the trials.

As always, if you want to talk about any of it, just reply.

Until next month,

André & Jody
ReSurfify

ReSurfify

Pioneering the future of sustainable biosurfactants

You are getting this because you asked to hear from us, or we thought you would want to. If we got that wrong, no hard feelings.

Unsubscribe • resurfify.com