Carbon Maps, a Paris-based holistic climate assessment and management platform for the food industry, has secured €4M in a pre-seed funding round from European VC firms Breega ( also backed Coverflex) and Samaipata.
The company intends to use the funds to help food companies decrease their environmental footprint (carbon footprint, biodiversity impact, water use, animal welfare).
Further, the French company will use the funds to develop its platform’s features and models, hire approximately 15 new talents and expand its services to other EU countries.
“Our ambition is to become the leading environmental accounting platform bringing together all players in the food value chain, empowering them to assess their products’ climate impact so they can reduce it sustainably,” stated Patrick Asdaghi, CEO of Carbon Maps.
Helping company reduce climate impact
Carbon Maps was founded by Patrick Asdaghi, Jérémie Wainstain, and Estelle Huynh to help food companies with its climate impact reduction plans, calculating key impact indicators, simulating trade-offs and offering progress assessment tools.
Supported by a scientific committee with environmental science and agriculture experts, including Christian Huygue (INRAE), and Benoît Gabrielle (AgroParisTech), the company does this by leveraging its science-based, mathematical models with AI.
Carbon Maps says it performs a rapid, high-precision assessment of consumer products, ingredients, raw materials and collects and analyses data across all stages of the food chain to calculate a variety of impact indicators, such as
- Carbon footprint
- Biodiversity impact
- Water use
- Animal welfare
As a result, it provides participants at all stages in the supply chain (producers, coops, brands, distributors) with tools to evaluate and monitor their respective climate strategies.
“Our food system is a major contributing factor to global greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity destruction, deforestation and water consumption worldwide,” Asdaghi added. “The environmental urgency has never been higher in consumers’ minds. Food brands are under increasing pressure from civil society and regulators to take responsibility. Carbon Maps offers concrete tools and solutions that enable brands to develop actionable insights on a SKU-basis, and build credible, effective climate plans relevant to their supply chains and their regions.”
The platform plans to cover all key indicators needed to support food companies’ ESG strategies, and, in particular, will integrate the Eco-Score, the upcoming environmental consumer product label detailed in France’s Climate & Resilience Law and expected to be in effect by the end of 2023.
“At Breega, we are thrilled to renew our support to Patrick and his co-founders in their mission to build the tools and infrastructure to help food companies manage their climate impact journey. Carbon Maps’ vertical approach, factoring often underestimated agricultural practices in their science-based platform, is a game changer,” declared François Paulus, Chairman & co-founder of Breega.
“The international potential of Carbon Maps is clear and vast. Seeing the extensive initial interest in France, we want to leverage our network in Southern Europe to help the company expand rapidly as the urgency of standardised environmental labeling is gaining momentum.” Aurore Falque-Pierrotin, Partner at Samaipata.
