Reportedly, the construction industry accounts for 11% of worldwide emissions. Also, it is claimed that the industry’s productivity has reduced by 23% in the past 25 years. Realising that there are many societal gains in incorporating sustainability into this sector and that’s what Swedish startup Alrik does.
The operations software provider Alrik just raised €1 million in seed funding from global venture capital firm Pi Labs, which recently invested in Moonhub, Pathways, and Stockoss.
The Swedish startup eyes to expand its services across Europe with the latest investment. It is in plans to reduce the construction sector’s large carbon footprint.
Decarbonises construction logistics
Alrik was launched in 2023 in Stockholm by Nici Sundén-Cullberg, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker, who was previously the CEO of challenger bank Lendify, and Axel Enblad, the former CEO of Nordic fintech firm Fakturino. It works with the mission to digitise and decarbonise construction logistics by empowering distributors, builders and logistics companies with software that people actually like to use.
The company tackles a global sustainability and productivity problem for material distributors in the construction sector. It does by monitoring emissions from point-to-point transportation enables developers and contractors to accurately measure emissions targets. Notably, digitalising the logistic network significantly reduces project delays, delivery lead times, and costs.
Alrik works directly with distributors to monitor and optimise emissions from construction deliveries through a single, unified platform.
Clientele base
Already, the company has over 100 customers, including many of Europe’s largest distributors, such as global building materials giant Saint-Gobain, northern European market leaders STARK Group, Kesko, Bygma, Mestergruppen as well as Swedish trade companies Karl Hedin and Woody.
While early users have reported reduced fleet emissions of up to 10%, one customer claimed to have witnessed a whopping 36% reduction in fleet cost after six months of use.
Faisal Butt, Founder and Managing Partner at Pi Labs, said: “Innovation plays a role in tackling emissions at every touch point in the global construction lifecycle, and the logistics supply chain and transportation of construction materials has been hugely overlooked until now. As a fifth of construction’s Co2 emissions come from moving materials to and from sites, we see the global potential for an efficient, unified system to tackle fleet-wide transportation emissions, under the leadership of two seasoned operators like Nici and Axel.”
Nici Sundén-Cullberg, Founder and CEO of Alrik, commented: “Construction sites across Europe continue to grapple with uncertain lead times for materials from a countless number of suppliers and distributors, which hinders their progress. The distributors also need to manage their own logistics network, with a bulk of this still being done over manual phone calls, hand-written records and whiteboards. The lack of coordination leads to poor supply chain visibility, expensive fleet operations and stalled projects on the client side. Alrik effectively eliminates manual coordination with, in many cases, 100 different suppliers and distributors, and unifies the entire supply chain network to deliver projects more efficiently.”
