CarbonCloud provides food companies with reliable data on their climate footprint

By Elcke Vels

More and more food companies want to be transparent about the carbon footprint of their products. But how and where can they find reliable data? CarbonCloud is a climate intelligence platform that reveals the footprint of food throughout the supply chain. In this installment of Start-up of the day, CEO and co-founder David Bryngelsson tells more about how the company is doing.

Why did you decide to start your company?

“Before I started with CarbonCloud, I was a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology for eight years. In my research, I focused on climate change mitigation broadly, and on the food industry specifically. The problem with the food industry is that a lot of companies are willing to have a positive impact, but don’t have access to climate information regarding the products they sell. And I thought this problem needs to be addressed.”

Tell us about your platform.

“We provide web based software that makes it easy for the food industry companies to access climate performance of their products, with a high level of detail. They get insight into emissions throughout the supply chain. The platform calculates everything from first principle and can thus capture primary data for everything from farm to retail, but it is also built in a way where this data can be fed in step by step. By providing only a few paremeters, such as ingredients and their proportions and where they come from, and where production takes place and where a product is sold, the platform will supplement the other thousands of parameters with representative data and provide accurate and detailed results immediately.

Let’s say you have a protein isolate and you want to know more about how it’s produced. You might want to compare different suppliers. But is the data that they are providing comparable? How did they make their calculations? Assessing such claims is really dificult. We solve this problem by ensuring that all supplers calculate the same way with comparable results.

I think it’s worth mentioning that all our data is openly accessible to everyone. The sense of urgency when it comes to climate change is so high. We don’t want to hide data behind paywalls.”

At this moment, what are you working on?

“We are in the so-called upscaling phase. We have reached a level of technical and commercial maturity that allows us to scale quite significantly.”

What has been your biggest milestone so far?

“There are a lot. Signing our first customer was really cool. And we got some bigger brands on board now as well, like Oatly and Dole Sunshine Company. They are building our climate data into their brand. It is something we can be proud of.”

And what challenges are you currently facing?

“Some challenges have to do with the team. It wasn’t hard to find people with a science background, as I have been a researcher myself. So a lot of people come from my own research group. However, it can be challenging, as we are growing, to not lose the efficiency of a smaller company. It has proven hard for us like everyone to find a balance between not getting bogged down in processes and rigid structures and having multiple people do the same thing. So we have to adapt as the company is scaling.”

What’s in store for the future?

“Technically speaking, we can enter other markets as well, such as the fashion market. Or we could help improve the food industry in different ways. Who knows what the future might bring. But for now, we need to focus on what we are doing at this very moment. We have found our market and will stick with it in upcoming years. 

I’m excited for what’s to come. One thing is for sure: I don’t see myself ever retire. Enjoying the beach and doing nothing is just not for me.”

Start-up of the day – Innovation Origins

Spread all over Europe, thousands of start-ups have the most innovative ideas. Innovation Origins puts them in the spotlight every day.