Searoutes, the Marseilles-based start-up that helps shippers reduce the carbon footprint of their transport, has announced a €1.3 million financing round led by WSB Beteiligungs, the venture capital firm founded by Wolf Scheder.

Created in 2019 by Dr. Pierre Garreau and Carsten Bullemer, Searoutes has designed its own, proprietary eco-calculator to compute the carbon footprint of a container along its journey. Incubated and accelerated by ZEBOX, the international incubator and accelerator founded by the CMA CGM Group, the start-up already has some sixty key accounts including Roquette, a global leader in plant-based ingredients for food, nutrition and health markets and Ceva Logistics a global logistics and supply chain company and is rapidly adding new customers.

Technology to Help Shippers Reduce GHG Emissions

Currently, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport account for up to 10% of shippers' total GHG emissions. This is compounded by the fact that calculating emissions in the logistics sector is a laborious task and prone to poor quality data.

Searoutes sees an opportunity to replace outdated spreadsheets with its data rich API and developed a SaaS platform using its own data and proprietary algorithms to help shippers find ways to reduce their emissions. Searoutes' technology can process and transform extensive datasets of freight information (historical ship positions, satellite data, engine specifications, schedule information, weather data, etc.) into meaningful information. The start-up helps shippers do more than just report their carbon footprint, by identifying opportunities to reduce and better manage their greenhouse gas emissions.

For example, a shipper can reduce their GHG emissions by 30% when making purchasing decisions by choosing newer, larger and slower fleets, and by up to 60% by choosing the right combination of ports and mode of transport when planning a door-to-door route.

Becoming the Standard in GHG Transparency for Freight Transport

Searoutes aims to become the standard in GHG transparency for freight transport, and its "data first" approach is already leading the way. The deal will fund the acceleration of the deployment of the solution to shippers and freight forwarders as well as other related technology platforms. Searoutes is also continuing to invest in research, in partnership with AI laboratories, to optimise the door-to-door loading-unloading cycle.

Dr. Pierre Garreau, Founder and Managing Director adds "Shippers have to deal with purchasing and managing logistics throughout the entire supply chain, not just the ocean piece. We need to help them shape better procurement strategies. For instance by choosing greener modes of transport, or more appropriate port of loading or discharge. Searoutes' vision is to give more visibility to green carriers, and enable shippers to select them more proactively."

International Recognition

Wolf Scheder-Bieschin, leading the seed investment round through WSB Beteiligungs GmbH, added: “Searoutes is rapidly winning over international transport professionals with its innovative approach.

 Searoutes services bridge the gap between current market solutions and a need to tackle climate change issues facing the supply chain and maritime industries. I'm impressed by the technology and R&D in place at Searoutes for developing powerful complex algorithms to analyse and process data. This offers a significant advantage for everyone involved in the industry.”

OHB venture Capital GmbH, the venture capital arm of the OHB Group, Team ABC venture, CMA CGM, a world leader in maritime transport and logistics, and a group of business angels, including Thomas Sørbø (Xeneta Co-founder), with key expertise in logistics and freight transport also participate in the financing round.

In addition, in August this year, the start-up was awarded a grant of €1.1 million from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF), financed by the European Commission as part of the project n°101038570 “CO2NTROL” in partnership with BuyCo, bringing Searoutes' total funding to €2.4 million.