AquiPor Technologies Inc., a Spokane company that’s developing porous pavement to help absorb, filter, and divert stormwater runoff, has pilot projects in the works and hopes to be profitable in about a year, says CEO and co-founder Greg Johnson.

Johnson says the company has identified dozens of potential opportunities for pilot projects, but likely will go after five potential revenue-generating projects “that will give us the most leverage in the market we want to be in.”

Those commercial projects include a sidewalk demonstration project in Spokane. “We have a letter of intent with the developer, so we’re working out the details of that,” he says.

The other four projects are in California and Arizona. “They are bigger-type projects that would be more like in 2025,” he says. “We want to be an engineering and technology company that goes out and does these bigger-type projects.”

Johnson says he expects the startup will be profitable around the second half of 2025.

“We’re fine-tuning the nitty-gritty final stage of product development work and then looking to next year to really take it to a growth mode,” he says. “We’ve done a lot of durability testing, and the science is there to say it should last longer than normal concrete, but we can’t say that until we have production in the ground for multiple years to prove it.”

AquiPor, which has eight employees, was co-founded by Johnson and Kevin Kunz in 2015 and began developing the patented material with the help of Spokane engineer Matt Russell.

“This is an acid-based concrete that is low cost,” Johnson says. “Our binder system is basically an industrial product that is very cheap to source. … You have this chemical reaction, and the last step in the process is very light heat that opens up the pores and gives us our permeability.”

The Journal last reported on AquiPor in 2022, when the company was preparing to seek $5 million in venture capital. Prior to that, the company had raised about $2.5 million.

Johnson says AquiPor had attracted interest from some nonlocal investors, but the founders decided they wanted to retain ownership in the company.

“We were going out and talking to investors, but we made that hard pivot,” he says. “Even if it takes a little bit longer, we’re going to preserve our ownership and the ownership of our early investors and do it on our terms.”

Three larger early investors are Inland Northwest contractors and operators in the concrete industry. “Other angels are local families,” he says. “All the rest of our investors are everyday retail crowdfund investors.”

To date, AquiPor has raised nearly $5 million, including $860,000 in the latest crowdfunding round.

“We’re still fundraising,” he says. “We’re crowdfunding at the moment.”

Crowdfunding investors gain equity in AquiPor, which was valued at $2.81 per share as of earlier this week, when the company’s total valuation was listed at $52 million on the StartEngine crowdfunding website.

Johnson says AquiPor’s proprietary technology can help in reducing some of what are called emerging contaminants of concern—specifically tire wear particles that stormwater carries into stteams and rivers and can end up in the oceans. He cites a 2023 study by Yale University, which estimates that nearly 80% of ocean microplastics come from synthetic tire rubber.

“Pervious pavement certainly has a role to play because if you can manage stormwater right where it falls, before it becomes runoff, then you’ve solved a big part of the problem,” he says.

AquiPor’s production technology also has lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional concrete production. Johnson says 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions originate from the production of concrete using portland cement—the main binder in conventional concrete.

AquiPor’s technology doesn’t use portland cement, Johnson says. “Out of the gates, our concrete has about 80% lower CO2 emissions than normal concrete.”

AquiPor currently is headquartered in a small office on the third floor of the Empire State Building, at 905 W. Riverside, and Johnson says he splits his time between there and the Spilker Precast LLC plant at 4231 E. Queen, in the Hillyard neighborhood, where production techniques are under development.

Johnson says the headquarters will move in July to a 300-square-foot office space in the Eldridge Building, at 1319 W. First.

The company also will need more industrial space, he says.

“We do have plans late this year to move into some more industrial-type warehouse space,” he says. “We’ll do a lot of testing there, and I think that we need a pretty big facility for that. We’ll be looking soon.”