PropaGATE Landing Pad update: A Singapore innovation takes root in WA Brewery

*Jolien Paalman taking a break with Hydroleap’s team amidst the installation work at Spinifex.*

Jolien Paalman, Principal

When Beanstalk launched the PropaGATE Landing Pad in December 2024, the premise was straightforward: scout the world to find the best technology that can address the challenges that Western Australia’s agrifood businesses face. Simply put, our job was to find it, bring it here, and make it work.

Following a successful technology showcase in August 2025 with four innovative wastewater companies, the PropaGATE Landing Pad reached another milestone in May.

Equipment from Hydroleap, a water treatment company from Singapore, has just been installed at Spinifex Brewery in WA. We believe this is the first time electrocoagulation is being used to treat wastewater at an Australian craft brewery. Beanstalk is facilitating a live test of whether a proven industrial technology can be adapted to work cost-effectively for small-to-medium producers. The results of of this trial will matter well beyond this one site.

*Hydroleap wastewater treatment units now installed at Spinifex Brewery Co.*

What PropaGATE Is

PropaGATE is Western Australia's first agtech-focused landing pad, a government-backed program designed to help WA agrifood industries access innovative technologies faster than local R&D can deliver them. Delivered by Beanstalk in partnership with the Grower Group Alliance and the Food Innovation Precinct WA, and funded through the Australian Government's Future Drought Fund and FIPWA, the program takes a challenge-led approach: start with real problems facing WA producers, then go and find the best available solutions globally.

That's the core logic of a Landing Pad. We believe that proven innovations exist in other industries and other countries that could address local challenges now, if someone bridges the gap. Landing pads do that work: sourcing global solutions, enabling local market trials, and supporting producers to adopt new technology with the confidence that comes from seeing it work in conditions like their own.

*The Spinifex team showing the wastewater innovators, including the Hydroleap team, their site during the August showcase visit.*

The Challenge That Rose to the Top

During two months of deep industry consultation many WA producers talked about their challenges accessing water and managing their wastewater. Craft breweries were one such industry. Brewing is a water-intensive process, and the wastewater it generates carries a high nutrient load. For breweries discharging to the sewer system, that means a significant burden on Water Corporation infrastructure. For those irrigating wastewater back onto land, which is common in regional WA, there are risks of nutrient runoff into groundwater and nearby waterways.

Most brewers are aware of the problem. Few have access to a solution that is practical and cost-effective at their scale.

PropaGATE put out a global call for wastewater solutions, and innovators from over 15 countries responded. After an extensive scouting process, we selected four companies and brought them to Perth for a technology showcase in August 2025, where they toured the state, visited breweries, and met with industry. From that cohort, one company was selected for a trial.

*Hydroleap CEO and Founder Moh Sherafatmand explaining Hydroleap’s technology at the showcase in August 2025*

From Singapore to Spinifex

Hydroleap is a pioneering greentech company that uses electrochemical technology to treat wastewater. Their electrocoagulation process works by passing an electrical current through wastewater to separate and break down contaminants, including the nutrients that make brewery effluent problematic. It produces significantly cleaner water, suitable for lower-load discharge to the sewer or for land irrigation with reduced risk of environmental harm.

The technology is commercially proven in industrial-scale applications. What had never been done was deploying it at the scale of a craft brewery.

From October 2025, Hydroleap's engineering teams worked across Singapore, Melbourne, and WA’s Peel region to design and manufacture equipment specifically adapted for Spinifex Brewery's process and volume. Spinifex, an Australian-owned brewer with venues in Broome and the Shire of Murray, brought genuine enthusiasm and a deep understanding of their operational constraints to the collaboration. Beanstalk facilitated this collaboration to ensure that the developed technology would achieve the desired results at Spinifex and could be scaled to other breweries and agrifood industry across WA.

This is something I've come to see as the most underestimated part of a Landing Pad program. Selecting the right technology is an important, but small, part of the work. The most challenging part is what comes after: an innovator and a producer don't naturally speak the same language, and when a project gets technically and operationally complex, you need someone in the room who understands both sides and can keep things moving. That's the role Beanstalk plays.

*The Hydroleap and Spinifex teams installing Hydroleap’s wastewater treatment technology at Spinifex.*

"Absolutely Game changing"

This May, the equipment was commissioned at the Spinifex site at the Food Innovation Precinct WA, in the Shire of Murray. We are now in the monitoring phase, measuring nutrient loads against Water Corporation standards and tracking electricity use and labour requirements at the brewery. Spinifex is already thinking about their second site and the opportunity for other breweries in similar situations. The Spinifex team called the trial and the support from the PropaGATE program “absolutely game changing”. The case study from this trial will be a proof point for every WA brewery facing the same challenge.

Without the PropaGATE program, I doubt this technology would have reached the WA brewing industry, at least not for a long while yet. That gap between "proven technology" and "available to local producers" is exactly what the PropaGATE Landing Pad exists to close.

Stay tuned, as Beanstalk will be sharing results as they come in.