CEOs are in charge of overseeing a company’s general operations. Delegating and guiding agendas, promoting profitability, controlling the organizational structure and direction of the firm, and interacting with the board of directors are a few examples of this. Liam Hardey is the CEO of Cellfion AB and is responsible for a wide range of responsibilities, as is typical for start-up businesses. These responsibilities include marketing and sales, investor relations, board work, developing the company’s strategy, HR and other administrative duties, and even participating in discussions about product development. At the moment, he and the team are focusing on the company’s upscaling, so they are working actively with the production development and looking for facilities for the company’s production line. He asserts, “I am fortunate to work with a fantastic team, who are all extremely talented at their jobs, and I have the pleasure to learn from them every day.” The scientists that work in the company and at the universities are world-class, and the company’s marketing team is second to none. He also adds, “We have built Cellfion on the pillars of trust, ambition, fellowship, creativity, and discipline, and we believe in diversity throughout all aspects of our team, from knowledge to age, gender, backgrounds, and experiences.”
Life Story
Liam was born and raised in a small town in the north of England, located on the outskirts of the North Yorkshire Moors. He participated in youth football leagues for several of England’s top football (soccer) academies, including York City and Leeds United. He was released from York City (League 2) when he was 12 years old, which finally caused him to give up football for a short while. Liam later went on to play football again which resulted in a two-year contract with Leeds United at the age of 14 but later released after the two year contact. Liam re-joined York City, the team that had previously dropped him, for the next two years after turning 16 and signing his first professional youth contract. At the end of the contract, Liam was once again released, and at that time he was offered the chance to join a football club in the north of Sweden, where he played for the following few years.
In 2017, Liam suffered a career ending injury when he tore two ligaments, strained one, and tore both cartilages in his knee. After two years of rehabilitation and two operations, he made a limited return to football, playing with Swedish Division 1 and 2 teams and later training with a Singapore Premier League team in 2019.
Cellfion AB
Liam had the good fortune to land a job in 2020 with the Linköping-based business incubator LEAD, where he worked on a variety of deep tech projects. He met the research team behind the amazing technology and learned more about the work being done at the university through one of those projects, the Cellfion one. He spent six months researching the industry and financial prospects for the study and rapidly realized the potential significance of the technology. It was a sustainable technology that would also be used to the energy transition, one of the fastest-growing and most important sectors of the economy.
To the best of the team’s knowledge, Cellfion is developing and commercializing the world’s first bio-based ion-selective membrane made from the most abundant biopolymer on the planet, cellulose derived from wood. The membrane can be used in different energy storage and conversion devices such as Redox Flow Batteries (a battery technology that can store substantial amounts of energy) and hydrogen technologies such as fuel cells (used for hydrogen conversion to electrical energy) and Electrolysers (used for the production of green hydrogen). He says, “Our solution isn’t limited to just these devices, as we have identified over 10 possible applications for the material.”
The Force behind Joining Sector
The key driving force to join this sector was the feeling of knowing that Liam could make a real impact with the technology. He says, “Climate change is one of the greatest challenges we are facing, therefore we need to reduce greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.” One thing that is being overlooked when it comes to climate action is the materials that are being used. The world is still turning to unsustainable materials that are fossil based and contain rare, non-abundant metals because of the lack of better alternatives. This is where Liam believes that Cellfion can make an impact and hopefully inspire others to dare to take similar journeys.
Seeing Challenges as Ways of Transformation
The future of manufacturing is exciting. The number of innovations that can be made in the area are enormous and Liam sees that manufacturing has the potential to be modern and innovative. He says, “We already see a push towards more sustainable manufacturing, and I believe that clean and bio technologies will be the future of manufacturing.“
Liam wants to see more daring individuals advancing novel, useful technology. Governments, risk capitalists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and researchers all have important roles to play in this. The absence of risk-takers and entrepreneurs that desire to advance the technology into a commercial product causes a lot of wonderful research and new concepts to be lost. He thinks industries can create the future it desires by promoting greater innovation.
According to Liam, in a start-up or scale-up company, one is constantly developing procedures and adapting value propositions based on the customers’ demands and wants, which is a never-ending process. He asserts, “What we put a lot of focus on today is customizing our membranes for different market segments and customers.” He believes that through market and customer focused development, Cellfion can improve performance and increase the efficiencies of energy devices. He adds, “There is immense potential in optimizing our solution to fit specific requirements in each of the applications we target, as well as the 10 potential applications we have identified.”
Guidance for Future Leaders
Liam can guarantee that there will be days when everything feels hopeless, or one gets stuck in a rut. He suggests for those times, “Just keep going.” He asserts, “You can only fail if you quit; hardships are just a part of the journey.” He recalls, “My father always said to me growing up that hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard. This is something that I carry with me every day, and something I saw as a footballer. The most talented players I played with at an early age are now working in dead-end jobs, whereas the ones that gave everything but did not have the most talent are now playing in the Premier League or representing international teams.”
Liam also believes that it is so easy to get caught up in one’s own work and the little details that one actually loses sight of the long-term goals or fails to see how far he or she has come. He says, “By surrounding yourself with experts and people you can trust, you can always find a way to solve challenges.”
Future Ideas
Liam envisions a really thrilling journey over the next five years. He anticipates that the business will have reached out to other geographic areas, increased the number of skilled employees at the company, researched new goods to add to its product line, and built the first plant in the world for the production of bio-based ion-selective membranes.