In 2017, Tagua SL, a leading Spanish eco-technology company with more than 30 years of experience in the field of water innovation, partnered with beike to respond to the severe fluoride crisis in Ethiopia. Faced with groundwater contamination (2-3 mg/L, well above the World Health Organisation limit), Tagua needed a high-performance adsorbent. BECHEM’s UZ-Min® Clinoptilolite zeolite, modified to enhance fluoride capture (40% more efficient through sodium activation), is at the heart of Tagua’s patented “HINDROP®” filter. By 2019, our joint solution reduced fluoride levels in villages such as Dida from 2.8 mg/l to 0.4 mg/l, providing safe drinking water to more than 10,000 people. Driving Tagua’s business in East Africa to grow by 300 per cent – proving that BECHEM’s zeolite products are not only of the highest quality (FDA/ISO certified), but also a transformative partnership.

Beca’s team came up with a solution: the development of oriented expanded vermiculite (EV) as an artificial defect inducer for ECC, taking advantage of PMC vermiculite’s ‘tunable interlayer spacing’ property. This collaboration has been described by the South African Mining Journal as ‘The Awakening of Laminated Clay’.