Ingeobras' EIC Accelerator Wastewater Digester: What It Paid For

Food factories produce wastewater so rich in organic matter that most of them either pay for large treatment plants or pay the fines for discharging it. Ingeniería de Obras Zaragoza, a water engineering firm in the Aragonese capital that trades as Ingeobras, set out to sell them something in between: ANAERGY, a compact, modular plant that runs the water through an anaerobic digester, which turns the organic load into biogas, then through aerobic and advanced oxidation stages, all in one system.

The European Commission selected ANAERGY in the EIC SME Instrument Phase 2 cut-off of 9 January 2019. Its list of winners gives the project two rows: Ingeniería de Obras Zaragoza SL and Proyectos y Construcciones Pirineo (Proycon), a manufacturer in Sabiñánigo, Huesca. The grant was €1,224,125 towards a total cost of €1,748,750. Ingeobras, the coordinator, received €975,275 of it, or 79.7%, and Proycon €248,850, according to the CORDIS fact sheet. This article covers Ingeobras; Proycon's part is covered separately.

Where Ingeobras Stands Now

Ingeobras is active. The Spanish company register entries summarised by Empresia and Infoempresa show it as active, with the latest entry in the official gazette BORME dated July 2026. Empresia gives 12 employees and annual sales between €1 million and €2.5 million; Infoempresa gives 10 to 49 employees and sales under €2 million. Neither shows the filed accounts for free, so profit, equity and the trend in staff since the grant could not be verified.

The ownership has changed. In 2024 the register recorded Joaquín Murría Martín, the chief executive, as sole shareholder. In February 2025 the company widened its corporate purpose to the purchase, sale, import, export and supply of equipment for water treatment plants. In November 2025 a new holding company, Inngen.io Seed SL, founded in October 2025 with €1,886,482 of capital and Murría as sole shareholder, replaced him as sole administrator, according to Empresia's record of the holding. In July 2026 the holding raised its capital by €99,288, ceased to be a single-member company and appointed a board that includes SWALALI SL and a second director. Who the new shareholder is and what it paid are not public.

The website still presents Ingeobras as an engineering firm for water, civil, industrial and structural projects, with an in-house innovation lab called INNGENIO, and it posted news every month from May to September 2026. Those 2026 posts deal with nitrates in drinking water, water supply security, emerging contaminants and hydrogen from wastewater; the August post on nitrates in Europe does not mention ANAERGY or any installed plant.

The Technology: A Smaller Digester for Food Industry Water

Anaerobic digesters are the standard way to treat wastewater with a high organic load: bacteria break the pollutants down without oxygen and release biogas. The CORDIS summary of the 2018 feasibility study names their limits: they remove only 60 to 80% of the chemical oxygen demand, so an aerobic stage is still needed before discharge; the smallest reactors cost about €300,000; and biogas yields are low. ANAERGY's answer was to integrate the anaerobic, aerobic and advanced oxidation stages in one modular plant, which the project called a first. Ingeobras said its prototype had been tested in four pilot plants, removing up to 99.8% of the chemical oxygen demand, and that the units would sell for €150,000 to €1,500,000 depending on size, according to the Phase 1 fact sheet and its report.

The Phase 2 objective adds that the digester includes PUREMUST, Ingeobras' patented biological process for removing nitrates and sulphates, and that it produces 16 cubic metres of biogas per cubic metre of water, enough to cover about 80% of a plant's energy needs. These are the company's own figures; no independent test of ANAERGY could be found.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

ANAERGY was Ingeobras' second EU grant for the same technology. A four-month SME Instrument Phase 1 study, from August to November 2018, paid the company €50,000; Proycon was listed as a participant without EU money. Ingeobras announced that selection in September 2018. The Phase 1 summary gave the commercial plan in plain numbers: sales from the first quarter of 2021, "starting with 26 units sold going up to 80 in 2024", and accumulated profits of more than €17.9 million over four years.

The Phase 2 grant agreement was signed on 24 May 2019 and the project ran from 1 June 2019 to 30 September 2021. The division of labour was set out in the objective: Ingeobras would handle technical upgrades, assembly, sales and installation, and Proycon, a partner of 12 years, would build the digesters. The CORDIS results article speaks of "these 24 months", while the dates on the fact sheet span 28; whether the project was extended is not stated. The final periodic report sets the five milestones against what was done.

1. MS1: upgraded anaerobic digesterDeliveredReported 4,954 ppm of chemical oxygen demand removed in a 4-hour retention time, with the heat exchanger moved inside the digester.
2. MS2: standard connection modulesDeliveredReported as fully developed, aimed at the leaks of earlier versions.
3. MS3: test benchDeliveredBuilt and run with several wastewater flows; four test lines were shown at the Zaragoza lab in December 2019.
4. MS4: industrial mass productionPartlyManufacturing manuals and protocols written; no production volume has been published.
5. MS5: commercial departmentDeliveredSet up, with the strategy changed by COVID-19; plants reported at a Spanish poultry producer and an Ecuadorian mining company.
6. 26 units at launch, 80 in 2024 (Phase 1 plan)Not announcedNeither Ingeobras nor any third party has reported a number of ANAERGY units sold.

The technical work was done and reported, and the plant reached paying customers. The CORDIS results article says ANAERGY "has already reached its commercial phase successfully, with its plants being installed in industries across the globe", naming a poultry producer in Spain and a mining company in Ecuador. The company's ANAERGY page gives the same two examples, and a 2023 profile by Go Aragón lists a mining operation in Ecuador among its projects. All three rest on the company's own account; neither customer is named anywhere, and no third party has reported on either plant.

What Ingeobras Has Done Since

After ANAERGY, Ingeobras' public research moved from methane to hydrogen. In July 2023 it began Hi2BIO with the University of Zaragoza's I3A and IA2 institutes, a three-year project funded through NextGenerationEU and Spain's energy agency IDAE to produce hydrogen from industrial wastewater by dark fermentation and photofermentation, according to the university and El Debate. A second project, BIOEnergHII, under the Eureka Eurostars programme with the membrane company UniSieve, aims at a mix of biohydrogen and biomethane from agri-food wastewater, according to Ingeobras. The budgets of both projects and Ingeobras' share could not be found.

The Go Aragón profile of August 2023 quotes Murría saying the company's own prefabricated plants are sold mainly in "Spain and Portugal, Chile and starting in the United States", and credits it with more than 200 turnkey projects in 20 countries, nitrate removal pilots for Madrid's water utility Canal de Isabel II and a Mar Menor pilot that removed 97% of nitrates. In December 2024 Ingeobras received Aragon's RSA 2025 social responsibility seal. No equity round, acquisition or layoff has been reported. ANAERGY was grant only, and Ingeobras does not appear in any public EIC Fund portfolio listing; a search found no record of EIC equity.

Why Europe Should Care

The agri-food industry, made up chiefly of small and medium-sized firms, is the EU's largest manufacturing sector by employment and value added, the CORDIS results article notes, and its water use is about 1.8% of Europe's total. A plant that cleans that water on a small site and covers part of its own energy fits EU water policy directly. The European Water Resilience Strategy, adopted on 4 June 2025, aims at a "sustainable, resilient, smart and competitive water-economy" and records that only 37% of EU surface water bodies have good ecological status. The ANAERGY report itself tied the project to the Green Deal's pollution and sustainable industry goals. Whether a dozen-person firm can supply that market at scale is the open question the record does not answer.

The Verdict

Ingeobras has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.