Reflections on 2025 – by Markus Jönsson, I-Tech CEO. 

As 2025 comes to a close, I want to reflect on a year of substantial progress for I-Tech and our barnacle-repelling antifouling technology, Selektope. This has truly been a year of innovation, collaboration, and continued positive momentum for Selektope in international markets.

At the start of the year, we released a new study with Safinah that shared data on biofouling levels for a sample of 685 vessels inspected upon arrival at dry dock over a five-year period. This study revealed shocking insights into the true prevalence of barnacle biofouling on the global shipping fleet.

But why do we run such studies? It's not just because we invented a barnacle-repelling biotechnology, it's because we care about the impact of barnacle biofouling on the planet.

Barnacle biofouling on ship hulls adds over 110 million tonnes of excess CO₂ emissions coming from the global shipping fleet annually. Thankfully, Selektope's presence in marine antifouling coatings continues to deliver significant benefits by reducing excess CO₂ emissions from excess fuel use demand from marine species hitchhikers below the waterline. This means Selektope is significantly contributing to the shipping industry's emissions-reduction challenge.

One major highlight for I-Tech was hosting the International Antifouling Conference in September, in our home town of Gothenburg in Sweden. Nearly 200 experts from around the world joined us to present advances across the field of marine biofouling and antifouling technology, present new scientific results, and discuss both innovation and regulation.

From a regulatory standpoint, the EU  Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR) review process for Selektope continued throughout the year and will continue into 2026. As part of this process, we have undertaken a great volume of work to support the process and attended many high-level meetings, including the High-Level Implementation Dialogue on the BPR regulation initiated by the EU Commission.

News of this process was picked up by Media outlets, including the Financial Times and Chemical Watch, in which journalists highlighted why evidence-based, science-driven antifouling solutions remain crucial to ensuring that currently approved marine biocides required by the coatings industry are available for use in future.

2025 was an extremely busy year for the team, with numerous events attended. In fact, our team members attended over 20 different shipping industry and coatings industry-related events in total. Also, I-Tech's new membership status in several shipping industry associations, including INTERCARGO and INTERTANKO,  deepened our links with the shipping industry even further.

None of the successes described above would be possible without I-Tech's dedicated team and our amazing customers and partners. Thank you all for your expertise, your trust, and your collaboration. The continued support from around the world inspires us to push boundaries in this industry.

...and as the I-Tech team looks forward to 2026, a year which will bring new opportunities and new challenges — we are well prepared to meet them with the same passion and expertise that we applied this year.