RADAR – Our selection of innovative businesses #71 | Leonard, foresight and Innovation by VINCI

The Finnish climate tech startup Infrakit secures €6 million to improve the energy footprint of construction sites

Espoo-based startup Infrakit Group Oy has just obtained a capital loan of up to €6 million from the Finnish Climate Fund.

Founded in 2020, the Finnish startup offers a cloud-based data management solution for infrastructure projects to help reduce construction time and costs. On average, Infrakit promises its customers savings of around 20% on overall infrastructure building costs, thanks to improved operational efficiency.

With its solution and its expertise in data analysis, the company is now tackling carbon footprint optimisation for construction sites. With its sustainability tools, Infrakit enables users to analyse environmental data linked to each project, and measure and anticipate the emissions generated by their activities, with the aim of implementing initiatives to reduce them.

Infrakit’s solution has been used in more than 3,000 Finnish and international projects. The company plans to invest €12.6 million in the coming years, a sum which includes the capital loan from the Finnish Climate Fund, €5 million in equity funding from one of its current shareholders, and grants from Business Finland and the Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment. The company believes that most of its future growth will be abroad.

Finnish startup Fiberwood raises €3 million to develop circular insulation and packaging

Still in Finland, where this time Fiberwood has just raised €3 million from Metsä Spring, the R&D and innovation arm of Metsä Group, a major Finnish paper and pulp manufacturer. Stephen Industries and the state-backed Business Finland also participated in the financing.

Founded in 2019, Fiberwood offers a recyclable and biodegradable building insulation alternative to commonly used materials such as rock or glass wool and plastic materials like polystyrene. Its innovative process is based on recyclable, bio-based materials made from wood pulp and waste from the wood industry. Its proprietary foam-forming technology used to manufacture the insulation sheets is more energy efficient and uses less water.

The insulation produced is carbon negative, because it stores carbon dioxide in the wood. When the insulation sheets are ready to be recycled, they biodegrade in the ground, leaving no plastic residue. What’s more, the company has also applied this process to create recycled and recyclable packaging intended for packaging and transport.

Product certifications and quality testing are in progress. This new investment should allow Fiberwood to scale-up production, aiming to have products commercially available by mid-2024. Metsä’s support will also enable the startup to secure its suppliy of raw materials, by implementing a circular economy for the reuse of waste from the paper industry.

German startup Specter Automation raises €2.7 million in seed funding for its building site optimisation solution

The German SaaS platform Specter Automation has just announced it has raised €2.7 million in seed funding. TechVision (TVF), LBBW Venture Capital, xdeck VC and several German and American business angels all participated in the funding round intended to accelerate the startup’s development.

Founded in Cologne in 2021, the startup’s automation solution produces 3D models of construction projects, running from the cloud to provide real-time estimates of costs, material requirements and project schedules. It promises its customers efficiency gains of 40%, thanks to construction site organisation optimisation and improving communication between all those involved in a project.

Specter Automation is not limited to the upstream phase of project design: the solution can be used to follow a construction site’s entire lifecycle up until project delivery, by automatically documenting what is happening on site, providing a follow-up and updating schedules accordingly.