RemePhy Appoints Sarah McMullen as CEO to Lead Commercial Scale-Up of Revenue Generating Soil Remediation Technology
RemePhy, an Imperial College London spinout developing plant–microbe systems to clean contaminated soil while recovering critical minerals, has appointed Sarah McMullen as CEO.
‘As a biologist, both the quality of the science and the scale of the opportunity at RemePhy appealed to me. If remediation can recover value rather than simply absorb cost, it stops being a regulatory burden and becomes economically viable.' said Sarah McMullen, CEO, RemePhy.
Originally trained as a biologist, Sarah returns to applied science to scale RemePhy’s nature-first remediation solution into commercial deployment, bringing more than 20 years of senior leadership experience in global investment management, most recently as Head of EMEA and CEO of PGIMLtd. She joins RemePhy to lead the company from laboratory validation into commercial deployment with landowners, developers and industrial partners.
RemePhy glasshouse trials
Heavy metal contamination of land renders it toxic for agriculture, limits development, and a source of ongoing health risk for surrounding communities.
An estimated 2.2 billion hectares of land is contaminated globally — twice the size of Europe.
Remediation today is a $38bn cost centre with no financial return, leaving mining legacy and brownfield land economically stranded.
RemePhy's patented plant-bacteria system extracts heavy metals out of contaminated soil as the plants grow and recycles the waste materials of metal salts and biomass. ose metals once harvested. Unlike conventional approaches that involve excavating and transporting polluted earth, RemePhy's method works in situ, using biology to do the extraction.
Originating from PhD research by Dr Franklin Keck and Dr Ion Ioannou at Imperial College London, and co-founded with company builder Cambridge Future Tech, RemePhy's system has demonstrated up to 17x higher metal uptake than conventional phytoremediation in trials. The recovered metals, including nickel, cobalt, and manganese, feed directly into the critical mineral supply chains that the clean energy transition depends on.
As part of the appointment, Co-Founders Dr Franklin Keck and Dr Ion Ioannou will move into operational roles. Keck assumes the position of CTO, leading the company's scientific and regulatory pathway and preparing for field trials, while Ioannou serves as COO, overseeing research execution and operational readiness for deployment.
"Sarah's appointment is a major step for RemePhy as we move from trials into commercial development. We can now advance toward field deployment with the full focus the technology and the opportunity deserve." said Dr Franklin Keck, CTO, RemePhy.
Owen Thompson, Co-Founder and CEO at Cambridge Future Tech, said:
"We've supported RemePhy since the beginning because the science is genuinely differentiated. Sarah brings the commercial experience to match that ambition."
With glasshouse trials underway and field trials targeted within twelve months, RemePhy is actively seeking partners with contaminated land to advance collaborative deployment.
For press enquiries, please contact Grace Mills on grace@camfuturetech.com
About RemePhy
RemePhy is an Imperial College London spinout developing nature-first remediation systems that use engineered plant–microbe partnerships to clean heavy-metal-contaminated land while recovering critical minerals as a commercial output. Its patented technology operates in situ, using plants to extract a wide variety of metals, then recovering those metals at high purity once harvested. Founded on PhD research by Dr Franklin Keck and Dr Ion Ioannou, RemePhy is advancing toward field-scale deployment to address an estimated 2.2 billion hectares of contaminated land globally.
