Dutch startup Pieter Pot bags €9M to enable a fully-circular e-grocery experience; here’s how

Rotterdam-based Pieter Pot, a company that delivers groceries with plastic-free packaging, announced that it has raised €9M in a fresh round of funding to scale up zero-waste groceries.

Pieter Pot reported that it has been scaling rapidly since inception, growing more than 10x year-on-year.

Investors in this round

The current round was led by London-based ETF Partners. With this investment, Tomer Strikovsky of ETF Partners will be joining Pieter Pot’s board.

Strikovsky says, “It’s clear that if we are to create a sustainable lifestyle, we need to tackle deeply entrenched problems in new ways. Pieter Pot is at the epicentre of multiple trends, including sustainability and technology, and reimagining a sector central to everyday life, specifically groceries. It is exactly the sort of business we are looking to invest in.”

Besides, existing investors SHIFT Invest, The Future Food Fund, and IQCapital (InnovationQuarter) have also invested in the growth of the company alongside new joiners Ed Boyd of HelloFresh, and angel investor and chairman of The Modern Milkman Simon Murphy.

Capital utilisation

The proceeds from this round will help the company to support its expansion into new geographies as well as other initiatives. The Rotterdam-based startup will also invest in its technology and infrastructure to provide a fully circular e-grocery experience.

Jouri Schoemaker, Founder and CEO at Pieter Pot, says, “Plastic packaging is a by-product. Consumers are interested in what’s in the box, not the box itself. By moving packaging to reusables, we’re able to radically alter consumption patterns without demanding people to dramatically change their behaviour. We’ve now proven this could be done at scale and, with the new investment, we are doubling down on growth and our customers’ convenience. ETF Partners’ experience and track record speak for itself, and we are delighted to have them on board.”

Plastic-free packaging

Plastic usage is growing continuously and is increasing emissions from its production and pollution through its waste. Though much of the focus has been on recycling plastic to reduce its impact, yet 60 per cent of plastic end up in either landfills or the natural environment. 

At the same time, e-commerce continues to radically alter the grocery sector, an area traditionally reliant on significant volumes of single-use packaging. According to Pieter Pot, “In total, we buy 26 billion plastic food packaging per year in the Netherlands, almost 3,300 per household. It’s not necessary.” 

This is where Pieter Pot looks to make a difference. It is on a mission to make groceries packaging-free. With Pieter Pot, groceries are delivered the next day in fully reusable jars. 

The company collects empties and manages the cleaning and refilling of its packaging. In doing so, Pieter Pot allows consumers to reduce their plastic consumption without having to change the way they buy.

Since its inception in 2019, more than 700,000 Pieter Pot jars have been introduced into circulation, which has helped reduce the need for more than 1.35 million single-use packages to date. In 2022, the company is targeting to eliminate one million packages per month.