French SME developing monolithic chromatography columns that speed up pharmaceutical purification while cutting solvent and energy use.
SEPARATIVE is a French deep-tech SME based in Saint Fons (Lyon area) that develops and commercializes advanced chromatography columns for the pharmaceutical industry. Their core product is a new generation of monolithic HPLC and flash chromatography columns designed to make active ingredient purification significantly faster while consuming less solvent and energy than conventional packed-bed columns. The company's commercial proposition targets pharmaceutical manufacturers and biotech firms that need to purify drug candidates or APIs at scale without the throughput bottlenecks and environmental costs of legacy separation technology. They are a product company, not a research services provider — their EU funding went toward developing and validating a proprietary consumable ready for market.
Both projects — the 2018 SME-1 feasibility and the 2021 SEP43 SME-2 — are centered on novel column architecture for pharmaceutical purification, with monolith explicitly named as the core technology in SEP43.
Both projects target pharmaceutical industry customers, with SEP43 specifically describing separation operations for drug purification pipelines.
SEP43 (2021–2024) lists 'sustainable', 'reduced energy consumption' among its core keywords, positioning the technology as an environmentally preferable alternative to conventional chromatography.
SEP43 explicitly covers both flash and HPLC modalities, indicating product breadth across preparative and analytical-scale purification.
SEPARATIVE's first H2020 project in 2018 was a brief SME Phase 1 feasibility study with no detailed keyword profile, described only in broad terms as 'disruptive purification consumables' — suggesting the technology concept existed but was not yet fully specified. By 2021, their full Phase 2 project SEP43 carried a dense and precise keyword set: monolith, flash, HPLC, sustainable, reduced energy consumption, speed — revealing that the intervening years sharpened the technology into a defined product with clear performance and sustainability claims. The trajectory is a straight line from concept to commercialization, with sustainability becoming an explicit pillar rather than a side benefit.
SEPARATIVE is on a commercialization trajectory — their Phase 2 project runs to 2024, meaning they are likely entering or approaching market launch, making them a relevant partner for pharma manufacturers seeking drop-in purification upgrades rather than a research collaborator for exploratory work.
SEPARATIVE has acted exclusively as project coordinator and has recorded zero unique consortium partners across both H2020 projects — a pattern consistent with the SME Instrument program, which funds single companies rather than collaborative consortia. This means they are not a network node in the traditional sense: they do not bring a web of research partners and are unlikely to be looking for consortium membership. Any collaboration with them would be bilateral — a technology licensing deal, a customer pilot, or a co-development agreement — rather than a formal EU project partnership.
SEPARATIVE has no recorded consortium partners and no cross-country collaboration in the H2020 database, consistent with their SME Instrument-only participation model. Their network footprint within EU-funded research is essentially zero; any industry relationships exist outside the CORDIS data.
SEPARATIVE occupies a narrow but defensible niche: a product company building a specific hardware consumable (monolithic chromatography columns) for a well-defined customer segment (pharmaceutical purification), validated by €2.4M in EU funding. Unlike university spin-outs that offer IP licensing or consulting, they are building a commercial product — which means a partner gets a tested, scalable solution rather than a research prototype. Their sustainability angle (reduced energy, solvent savings) also aligns with the pharmaceutical industry's growing ESG pressure on manufacturing operations, giving them a regulatory tailwind that pure performance vendors lack.
