Aquaporin Brand Guidelines: A Danish Membrane Built on Nature’s Water Channel

A protein chemist and nature’s own water filter.

Aquaporin was a Danish company that tried to turn a protein into a water filter. The Danish company register lists Aquaporin A/S as established on 1 January 2005, and the European Patent Office names its founders as the protein chemist Peter Holme Jensen and Morten Østergaard Jensen, who started it near Copenhagen. According to the EPO, Holme Jensen had worked for pharmaceutical companies before setting out to pursue his own invention, after a friend pointed him towards aquaporins.

Aquaporins are the proteins that let water pass through the membranes of living cells while holding back salts and minerals. The research behind them was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2003, as the Turkish business paper TR Monitor noted in 2021 when it profiled the company. Aquaporin’s idea was to build those proteins into a man-made membrane. The EPO describes the result as a “biomembrane,” with aquaporins set in an active layer over a highly porous support, which moves water by forward osmosis rather than by pushing it through fine pores at high pressure.

The work brought early recognition. In 2011, the EPO says, Aquaporin partnered with the German membrane maker Membrana GmbH with the aim of integrating its technology. In June 2014 Holme Jensen, Claus Hélix-Nielsen and Danielle Keller won the European Inventor Award in the category for small and medium-sized enterprises. The Copenhagen Post reported on 23 June 2014 that Aquaporin finished ahead of the Spanish antenna maker Fractus and the Swedish company Hövding, and that the technology had been patented in 40 countries; the company called the prize “the Oscar of the patent world.”

Aquaporin Inside, from kitchens to the space station.

The company sold its technology under one name, Aquaporin Inside, a registered mark it used on every membrane. Its 2023 annual report describes flat-sheet and hollow-fibre membranes for both reverse osmosis and forward osmosis, and groups the business into residential drinking water, industrial reverse osmosis and forward osmosis. The report says the protein is produced by a production organism and purified before it goes into the membrane, and that the membrane coating was applied either at contract manufacturers or at the company’s own production facility in Lyngby, north of Copenhagen; we give that as the company’s account.

The product names changed with each market. In Turkey, TR Monitor reported, Aquaporin arrived in September 2020 with a partner, Nordic Foreign Trade, and a household purifier called ZERO. In 2023, the annual report says, it launched the A2O series in Scandinavia, an under-sink purifier called A2O Pure and a built-in kitchen unit called A2O Bar. For industry it sold CLEAR reverse-osmosis membranes, and for forward osmosis it offered the hollow-fibre modules HFFO2 and HFFO14 and a range of systems called Essence.

The 2023 report names agreements that year with Kurita in Japan, with PUB, Singapore’s national water agency, which it says used CLEAR membranes in water reuse, and with the Spanish water company FCC Aqualia. In China it signed an exclusive agreement with AquaShield, which it describes as the global brand licensee for Philips Water Solutions. The same report lists offices in Istanbul, Shanghai, Singapore and Los Angeles alongside the Danish headquarters.

The company also told a story about space. It called NASA its “very first customer,” and its 2023 annual report says the Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen tested the Aquaporin Inside membrane on the International Space Station in 2023, in work with NASA, the European Space Agency and the Danish Aerospace Company on water reuse for future stations. In 2021 Holme Jensen told TR Monitor that the company had spent more than a decade on development and testing in space with NASA and ESA before turning to consumers and industry.

Design and documentation.

Desalination and industrial water companies sell things that few people ever see up close. Their customers are utilities, governments, refineries, mines and factories, and what they buy is rarely a boxed product: it is a plant, a process, a long operating contract or a membrane that will sit inside a pressure vessel for years. That shapes how these companies present themselves.

The plant is usually the hero. Company websites and annual reports in this field tend to lead with aerial photographs of coastal desalination works, with intake pipes running out to sea and long halls beside the shore. Inside, the familiar image is a row of white or grey pressure vessels holding reverse-osmosis membranes, stacked rack upon rack, or the polished casings of pumps and pressure exchangers that recover energy from the brine stream. Engineers in hard hats and high-visibility jackets on site, checking a control screen or walking a pipe gallery, give the pictures a human scale.

The vocabulary is technical and often trademarked. Membranes, energy-recovery devices and treatment processes carry their own names, and companies list reference plants, countries and project counts the way consumer brands list stockists. Awards from the water trade press and industry bodies are often displayed prominently.

The industry also meets in person. Trade fairs such as IFAT in Munich and Singapore International Water Week bring utilities, contractors and equipment makers to the same halls, and the stands there, with their models, membrane cut-aways and video walls, are one of the few places where these brands show themselves to each other. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company and marks what rests on its own word.

A listing in 2021, a bankruptcy in 2026.

Aquaporin went to the stock market in 2021. Its company announcement of 28 June 2021, reproduced that day by the Danish business newsletter Økonomisk Ugebrev, said the first day of trading on Nasdaq Copenhagen was expected that day; the chairman, Niels Heering, called it “a great day,” and Holme Jensen, described as chief executive and co-founder, said the capital raised would let the company deploy its commercial strategy. The 2023 annual report gives its ticker as AQP.

By 2025 the company needed new capital. In August 2025, the company later said, it began a strategic review to look at raising capital through new shares, a strategic transaction or a partnership. On 19 December 2025 the board announced a rights issue and warned that, if it was not completed, there would be material uncertainty about whether the company could continue as a going concern. On 30 January 2026 the board withdrew the offer, saying the results did not provide enough funding, and resolved to file for bankruptcy; it said it had not found investors or partners to continue commercialising the technology “through Danish ownership.”

On 2 February 2026 the Bankruptcy Court at the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court in Copenhagen issued a bankruptcy order for Aquaporin A/S and a trustee was appointed, the company announced. The Danish company register summary now lists the company as in bankruptcy, and Aquaporin A/S no longer trades.

For a design guide, Aquaporin shows how a technology brand can be built around one ingredient name, carried on every product, while the products themselves change from market to market. Compare Kurita, the Japanese water-treatment group that partnered with it, and Hydranautics, another membrane maker. For this guide we use a deep teal, a pale mist and a seaglass green with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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