It all began in 1895.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen stuck his hand in a beam of radiation and got a nice picture on a fluorescent screen. He rushed off to tell his wife and take her hand picture as she had a nice wedding ring and produced the first images showing the inside of the material as well as a ‘foreign’ object. He set about studying this new phenomenon. He labelled the rays ‘x’ as an unknown quantity and concluded that they are highly penetrative, travel in straight lines at the speed of light, and can produce ionising, fluorescent and scattered radiation.

Mantex AB use an advanced configuration of his miraculous discovery to measure organic materials – inside and out, and detect foreign objects, and a lot more besides.

Globally

All processes that refine or use harvested trees, plants or crops are influenced by variations in the properties of the raw material. In particular the large differences in water content causes challenges for purchasing and processing organic matter in industrial quantities. We know of no other effective method to detect, measure, and instantly apply the results to achieve the benefits.

Globally we believe that combustion of renewables as well as the pulp and paper industry, the timber industry and the bio-fuel industry together have a turnover of more than EURO 1000 billion. These industries are constantly trying to compensate for the unpredictability of the raw material. The effect is that countless millions are wasted in energy, chemicals, yields, quality and labour costs. If the true potential of the feed material could be utilised the huge economic advantages to the producer would be accompanied by improvements to the environment.

Mantex appears to have found the
solution to a century-old problem. Professor Mats Nylander

Andritz Pulp and Paper and Mantex AB sign long term partnership agreement as distributor and system integrator for the Flow Scanner product range. The agreement covers sales, installation, integration, and support.

Pegroco Invest becomes major shareholder. Mantex begin partnership with Andritz and start introducing the Flow scanner to North America.

After successful trials pilot studies at energy producers started for the new Biofuel Analyser.

Flow Scanner business case proven at European kraft mill – through matching the correct amount of cooking chemicals to the dry content in the digester . The reduced safety margins means lower chemical consumption and increased production.

Newly designed Biofuel Analyser for biofuel materials begins trials with assorted samples from across Sweden and beyond.

Mantex secures order for Flow Scanner at a large international pulp and paper producer with trial unit being installed at a kraft mill in Poland.

 

Schweighofer Fiber order Flow Scanner for their batch digester plant at Hallein, Austria.

Industrifonden becomes second largest shareholder in Mantex AB. Initiation of product industrialisation phase.

Stora Enso and Holmen order Flow Scanners for continuous digester control applications after successful integration of Flow Scanner at Domsjö.

Waggeryd Cell AB order the first Desktop Scanner for wood chip sample measurements. BillerudKorsnäs orders the first Log Scanner.

Aditya Birla (previously Domsjö Fabriker) orders first Flow Scanner instrument. The hardware installation is complete in 2010 and performance trials begin. Three months later an order for a second Flow Scanner is placed.

Innogy Venture Capital – the venture capital firm of German energy utility company RWE – invests in Mantex AB, the first investment in a Swedish company.

Mantex receives the Cleantech Company of the Year award (Press Release in Swedish) during Stockholm Cleantech Venture Day.

First investment from STING Capital (associated with the incubator STING – Stockholm Innovation & Growth).

After a lot of research and night-time work, the founders release a white paper and gain recognition from Holmen Paper with an order to build a sample-based prototype instrument. On-line instruments for wood chips and logs are conceived.

The company was founded in 1987 by Erik Oden, Ragnar Kullenberg, and Fredrik Danielsson after feasibility tests with wood chips in a bone mineral density hospital scanner. The results correlated with the material types and moisture contents and the potential for global domination was quickly understood.