LEVIDIAN MIDDLE EAST: From Research to Reality: Levidian’s Graphene Revolution
Levidian’s technology is helping customers decarbonise industrial operations while producing hydrogen and graphene. This advanced material is beginning to enter industrial supply chains, and Managing Director MENA, Colin Elcoate tells Energy Focus that the company sees strong growth potential in the coming years.
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In the global race to decarbonise industry, attention often centres on technologies themselves — hydrogen, batteries, and renewable power. Yet behind these systems lies another layer of innovation: the materials that make them possible.
From stronger composites and lighter infrastructure to more efficient energy systems, the transition to a low-carbon economy is increasingly a materials story. One material growing in importance is graphene.
First isolated in the UK in 2004, graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. Stronger than steel, lighter than aluminium and highly conductive, it has long been hailed as a wonder material. The challenge has been producing it at scale at a cost industry can accept.
Cambridge-based Levidian believes it has found a solution — one that addresses methane emissions while supplying advanced materials.
“Levidian is an advanced materials business and we have a unique capability that was spun out of Cambridge University to crack methane into solid carbon in the form of graphene and clean hydrogen – LOOP,” explains Managing Director MENA, Colin Elcoate. “It is a patented capability, and we see real traction on the advanced materials side with graphene having many potential applications across industry. We have a great technology that we can deploy wherever methane and power are available. We can produce sizeable quantities of graphene at good consistency and high volumes, and as we scale, the economics begin to meet market expectations.”
LOOP uses plasma to break down methane into hydrogen and carbon without combustion. Carbon is captured as graphene — creating both a decarbonisation solution and a valuable industrial material.
“We are essentially stripping solid carbon from methane, so there is a very strong sustainability and decarbonisation angle to the technology. We produce significant quantities of graphene and hydrogen. It is a compelling value proposition that can be deployed close to the source of need,” Elcoate highlights.
Headquartered in Cambridge with around 55 employees, the company has steadily built momentum as interest in graphene grows. Manufacturers across plastics, concrete, coatings and metals are exploring how it can improve strength, conductivity and durability.
Recognition has followed. Levidian has been ranked among Europe’s fastest-growing startups and included in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50. Partnerships with industrial players are pushing graphene beyond laboratory-scale experimentation.
Recent collaborations include Astra Polymers, developing more sustainable plastic products using graphene, and Kanoo Energy, where Levidian has secured tonne-scale orders — a milestone for a material previously sold in gram or kilogram quantities.
Interview with Colin Elcoate, Managing Director MENA
REGIONAL FOCUS
While Levidian’s roots remain in the UK, its growth strategy is increasingly international. One region in particular is emerging as a focal point: the Middle East.
From Abu Dhabi, Elcoate leads a growing team focused on deploying the company’s technology and developing markets for graphene.
“We have great ambitions to grow. I am the regional leader, we have a business development manager, and two field service engineers. Importantly, we have also added a principal scientist and we believe 2026 will be the year that we start to build true production capacity in the Middle East.”
Having moved beyond early start-up phases, the company is now focused on industrial deployment.
“We now see a pathway to grow aggressively,” Elcoate says. “We want to deploy more equipment and onboard more customers, and that will allow us to scale fast. By 2030, we expect to achieve annual revenues around $100 million.”
The region offers a particularly compelling environment for growth, with abundant gas, industrial capacity and interest in advanced materials.
“We are really well positioned to support the drive as major players look for new value streams from their materials. It is an exciting opportunity.”
Importantly, investment from Mubadala, one of the sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi, has accelerated expansion and allowed Levidian to bring the technology into the region and secure a position in supply chains.
“The technology has been working perfectly in our facility in Cambridge for a decade. The first phase of the growth story was around deploying that technology in customer-ready units in real-world environments. We built 9 and put them to work in a range of use cases across different environments,” explains Elcoate.
Now, the company is pleased to have completed a pilot project alongside ADNOC, in a live gas processing plant, where the technology performed exactly as expected.
“That demonstrated the technology in a live industrial setting, producing hydrogen and graphene on site with one of the most influential players in the Middle East, and now we are working hard to push the material into the supply chain,” he adds.
The next stage is important but requires patience. Accessing markets, talking to customers, and ensuring graphene is adopted is a tough but worthwhile goal.
“While our HQ is scaling up the technology so it can produce industrial levels of graphene, we are busy talking to potential users of graphene who see the benefits but want to know more about the actual performance alongside their products. This year, we will start to bring those upgrades to the region,” says Elcoate.
Government interest in advanced materials across the Gulf is helping accelerate experimentation. “It’s a great place for us to be anchored. In the UAE and Saudi Arabia, there are strong graphene government-sponsored initiatives. We do still have to demonstrate the tech and prove the material value, and that is the industrial journey we are on now.”
GLOBAL EXPANSION
Beyond the Middle East, Levidian is building partnerships worldwide.
“We have gone through start-up, formed a brand, got the tech out there, and now we are demonstrating that we can deploy it industrially at scale with key partners across the region, while getting the material adopted in the marketplace,” details Elcoate.
Europe has been an early proving ground with Levidian well-established in the UK and with strong completed pilots in Austria. Asia and the Americas are the next targets.
“We have shipped our first unit to Asia where we have moved into Malaysia. We are working with Gas Malaysia to establish a presence in the region where there are plenty of opportunities. Malaysia has government-sponsored initiatives around advanced materials and graphene specifically so that is very exciting and Gas Malaysia is a great partner,” says Elcoate.
“We have also opened an office in North America and we have ambitions to penetrate that market. There are many strong use cases, the market is interested in the tech, and there is great investment potential for us.”
Commercial progress is already visible, and this is vital for the science-based company that is confident in its product but always needing to showcase real progress.
“At the end of 2025, we sold our first tonne of material into Brazil and that was our largest graphene order into the Americas. The coming months, we will have our first operational unit in the USA with our partner Southwire. We are making steady progress globally, and we are busy working out how to penetrate India which has a strong graphene strategy,” Elcoate confirms.
ADOPTION CURVE
Despite momentum, graphene adoption remains a challenge. It is a relatively new material with few obvious and long-term use case success stories.
“It has been an exciting advanced material for 20 years but nobody has adopted it at scale,” admits Elcoate.
“We find that we get great traction with pilots and trials – many materials scientists want to test graphene – but getting it adopted into a product at industrial scale is where the challenge is and where we spend most of our time just now. It’s a slow journey but we are making strong progress. We see ourselves moving into adoption stage through 2026 and 2027.”
History, he says, shows patience is normal for novel materials.
“Looking back at novel materials – silicon, for example – they take two or three decades to become normalised in the marketplace. We are on that natural trajectory.”
LOCAL STRATEGY
Levidian embeds technology and expertise directly within the markets it serves. The company has no interest in operating a wholesale-type operation from the UK.
“We are firm believers in localisation. We believe we have to take people and products into the market,” says Elcoate, adding that core research will always remain in Cambridge but processes and output will be delivered locally.
“We have some of the best scientists in the world working on the core technology in terms of LOOP, plasma tech, and graphene science. But we have then taken the solution into the region to work closely with industrial partners on scale up.”
Looking ahead, Levidian remains confident in the industrial future of graphene, and the company’s ability to assist in demanding decarbonisation environments.
“We are a clean tech advanced materials business, centred in the UK, with the tech coming out of one of the world’s foremost universities and we are, as fast as we can, industrialising that and taking it across the world,” Elcoate reiterates.
Advanced materials will underpin the next phase of the energy transition, and this is yet another opportunity for Levidian to embed the sustainability values that have always been so important.
“One of the areas where graphene really helps is in the energy transition. Everyone is talking about batteries and other great technologies but underneath that is a lot of material that is required. Graphene is in that supply chain, and we see ourselves building advanced materials for the energy transition into some really advanced technologies.”
For Levidian, the scientific processes are complex but the goal is simple.
“It is genuinely exciting and genuinely transformative. We are one of just a few in the world that can offer such a rounded, sustainable solution at source,” concludes Elcoate.