Charles Sanders - CEO

Charles Sanders is CEO of OXYOL. Charles qualified from Durham University with a degree in Engineering and Management, with a specialisation in Mechanical Engineering. With an early career in technology and consulting, Charles was one of a group of founders who lead Druid Group from the early 1990s through to its acquisition by Xansa in 2000 for £763m.

Charles worked extensively across Europe with Tier 1 clients with large-scale supply chain re-engineering programmes, and lead teams from Druid to deliver rapid results. These programmes consistently focussed on improvements in operating efficiency, overhead minimisation and working capital reduction to achieve significant bottom-line benefits.

Such is Charles’ continuing ambition, he is now bringing bottom-line benefits to pan-European companies using clean-energy technologies. Having developed a strong base of expertise in clean and renewable energy in 2005, Charles joined with Peter Knee and Nick Smailes as founders of Oxyol in late 2005.

Peter Knee - Director

Peter Knee is a co-founder and Director of OXYOL with responsibility for Strategic Marketing and Business Development. With 12 years as an ‘Operating Board’ level member of EMI Recorded Music, the major portion of (then FTSE 100) EMI Group, as SVP Operations he ran global supply chain operations with a P&L responsibility of £700m. He was also responsible for the Group’s Environment Report, at a time when such initiatives were in their infancy.

In this role, Peter managed a marketing led, very fast moving and fully integrated manufacturing and distribution supply chain with a very demanding service culture. With operating facilities throughout Europe, he is well versed in the different market challenges required of a pan-European business and how best for a customer to implement and optimise the OXYOL benefits and for OXYOL to meet the service requirements of its customers.

In particular, his logistics background enables him to relate closely to the challenges and opportunities for the road transport industry – a key sector beneficiary of OXYOL’s product range; and his environmental experience at EMI makes him a strong proponent of pro-active environmental awareness to create long term corporate advantage.

As a Chartered Accountant, Peter’s early years were spent in the automotive and oil industries, in which he still retains a close interest and contact network.

Nick Smailes - Director

Nick Smailes is Director of IP for OXYOL. With over 15 years’ experience of technology venture development, his role at OXYOL is to identify and develop future commercial solutions to enhance OXYOL’s portfolio of customer led clean energy solutions.

Nick is one of the UK’s leading figures in University technology transfer having led SETsquared, the UK’s largest University commercial partnership involving the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Southampton and Surrey from inception in 2002. Since 2005 Nick has also led a DTI programme working with technology transfer organizations in California, to access new technologies from US University and state research programmes with combined annual research budgets of over $5bn. Nick also works closely with the UK’s leading IP venture investor, IP Group plc.

He has experience of starting and investing in early stage companies in sectors including medical devices, biotech, integrated circuits, telecoms, software, chemical filtration and clean technology. He has held senior roles with many of these companies and also co-founded an early stage venture capital firm in 1999. Nick trained with Touche Ross and Co. until 1993.

Nick joined Charles Sanders and Peter Knee early in 2006 as a co-founder of Oxyol.