Nucor has become a minority shareholder in Notre Dame chrome plating spinout Trion Coatings and will build the spinout’s first manufacturing facility at its own base in Indiana.
Trion Coatings, a US-based chrome plating ingredient developer spun out of University of Notre Dame secured an undisclosed amount of funding today from steel product maker Nucor.
Nucor will take a minority equity stake in Trion Coatings’ parent company, which was not named in the press release.
Founded in 2015, Trion Coatings is developing a material to replace hexavalent chromium in the process of chrome plating, whereby a thin chromium sheet is affixed to a metal object for decorative, resistance and cleaning purposes.
Employees exposed to hexavalent chromium are vulnerable to conditions including allergic contact dermatitis, nasal perforations or lung cancer, but Trion’s process instead relies upon trivalent chromium salts which are better absorbed by the human body.
Nucor will construct Trion’s first commercial manufacturing facility at its Nucor Fastener complex in Indiana and will have exclusive worldwide rights to Trion’s approach in long steel plating products.
Trion was incubated at Notre Dame’s Idea Center to commercialise work by Edward Maginn, chairman of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Joan Brennecke, a former faculty member now at University of Texas at Austin.
Mauricio Quiroz-Guzman, a former Notre Dame postdoctoral research assistance since appointed chief scientist of Trion, and Patrick Benaben, an electrochemistry expert, also contributed to Trion’s founding research.
Trion launched as a joint venture between Neo Industries, a coating and finishing arm of manufacturing holding company Heico Companies, and Ionic Liquid Solutions, a research and tech transfer division of family office Middleburg Capital Development.
Middleburg Capital Development now holds majority ownership of Trion, while the university owns a minority stake.
