The year 2022 couldn't start better for Lixo which has just signed its first capital raising round of 3.5 million euros with RAISE Ventures, Demeter Partners and Amaury Bierent.
It's no secret that we live in an era where social and environmental issues are becoming more and more central for companies and individuals. The issue of waste management and valorisation is a crucial part of the challenges we have to face in the coming years. Indeed, it is urgent to find innovative solutions to the soaring cost of raw materials coming from the other side of the world, but also to improve recycling and support an industry that is a novice to this sector.
Marjorie Darcet, co-founder and CEO of Lixo explains: "Not all waste is recyclable, but the vast majority is valorisable. The industry still has some way to go to get there and fully integrate into the circular economy."
It is with these goals at the heart of its model that Lixo was founded in late 2019. 2 years after its creation and through this raising, Lixo confirms again its ambition to improve the efficiency as well as the transparency of the waste management and valorisation industry.
More than ever, the key success factors are present to make this market evolve towards the circular economy:
- A changing international context: countries in Asia have blocked imports of waste for recycling from Western countries. They must therefore find solutions to treat them on their territory;
- The explosion in the price of energy and virgin raw materials makes recycling a promising alternative to the import of consumer goods and raw materials;
- States are arming themselves to encourage recycling: faced with these facts, they are revising their objectives upwards and increasing the taxation of landfills;
- Companies are lining up: the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) sector is investing to integrate its operations into the circular economy;
- Recycling affects everyone: waste management is a complex industry with efficiency questioned by the media and environmental associations.
To support this industry, Lixo has developed smart solutions (software and sensors based on image recognition) to enable industry players to better trace their waste, to valorize it and to turn it into resources for tomorrow. A waste is a data and Lixo makes it speak in order to help the industrialists take the best decisions.
The solution has already been implemented with many players in this sector:
- Collectors (Veolia, Brangeon);
- Sorting centers (Sotraval, Kerval etc.);
- Recyclers (Freudenberg, Wellman etc.);
- But also with transversal and national actors such as Citeo or Valorplast.
Olivier Bordelanne, Partner at DEMETER IM reminds us that sorting and the quality of sorting are essential steps that make recycling and waste valorisationmeaningful. Without efficient sorting bringing consistency in the "quality" of the input, recycling or valorisation does not work.
This capital raising will allow Lixo to accelerate the industrialization of its processes and to enrich its solutions thanks to all the unpublished data it reveals. A reinforcement of the team is also expected in all areas to allow the growth of the performance of the solutions, the use cases addressed and the geographies covered.
At the same time, transparency and traceability are at the heart of Lixo's mission, which is being built as an open company, with the ambition of becoming a purpose-driven and B-Corp certified company. The startup already shares its salary scale internally, and has initiated its carbon footprint assessment.
