■ Sheco, a social venture supported by SK Innovation, participated in GITEX Future Stars 2021 in Dubai and revealed SHECO ARK, an oil retrieval system optimized for small-scale marine oil spill accidents.

■ Sheco introduced that this solution that can minimize time spent on recovery, manpower, costs, and the spread of pollutants

Sheco, a Korean social venture specializing in robots for marine pollution response that SK Innovation supports, took part in GITEX Future Stars 2021 held in the Dubai World Trade Center from October 17 to 20.

GITEX (Gulf Information Technology Exhibition), or GITEX Global, is a large scale information and communications technology (ICT) trade show, exhibition, and conference that takes place in Dubai every year. GITEX Future Stars is a part of GITEX Global, and it is the Middle East, North Africa & South Asia’s biggest startup event where startups, investors, and corporate incubators throughout the world gather.

Recently, GITEX Future Stars has been rebranded into “North Star Dubai.” According to the organizer, it were participated by more than 700 starts up from about 60 countries, along with about 400 investors and 450 speakers this year. At the event, Sheco presented its self- developed solution called SHECO ARK, an oil skimmer specifically designed for small-scale oil spill accidents.

SHECO ARK is developed with focus on efficiency, convenience, and eco-friendliness in line with an increasing number of micro oil spill accidents. First, its compact and lightweight design allows prompt initial response to an accident, and it does not require post-processing since it has an internal oil-water separation function. Also, since SHECO ARK is in the form of a semi-submersible drone that has wireless remote control, it can work well in marine environment. Its horizontal collection method and retrieval impeller allowing powerful, continuous collection is also a notable strength.

It has a significant environmental effect in that it reduces pollutants generated in the process of recovery operation to a minimum.

Through the expo, Sheco took it chance to cooperate with Endangered Wildlife OÜ, a fintech company specializing in biodiversity evaluation, to gauge the economic effect on marine lives by reducing oil spill damages. Sheco also negotiated with UESE, an Italian consulting agency, on the exclusive dealership of Sheco products in the European market while concluding an exclusive dealership contract for mutual products with BIOBLUE of BIOSOLVITS, an eco-friendly oil absorbent manufacturer in Brazil. As a result, Sheco noted it had seen its products’ global expandability.

“SHECO ARK is a robot with a wide range of applicability that goes beyond marine pollution accident recovery sites to various marine industries and water-purification areas,” said Kwon Gisung, CEO of Sheco. “Starting from remote-controlled robots, we will attain a complete automation for accident sites from visual recognition, multi-control clustering, to complete autonomous driving, etc.”

With its excellent technologies and social values, Sheco is recognized as a promising eco-friendly social venture enterprise by Korean government agencies and organizations. The company was selected as one of the 20 enterprises of EGG program, a green venture scale-up program jointly organized by SK Innovation, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and the Korea Institute of Startup & Entrepreneurship Development. Prior to the selection, Sheco was one of the social ventures that entered the “SV2 Impact Partnering Season 2” agreement, which supported environmental social ventures through the crowdfunding of SK Innovation members in 2020

[Photo]

▲ The SHECO ARK developed by social venture Sheco

▲ A visitor is listening to Sheco’s product explanation at Sheco’s booth at GITEX Future Stars 2021

▲ Sheco’s booth at GITEX Future Stars 2021