Amsterdam’s Seenons raises €10M to bring circularity to waste management in Europe

Amsterdam-based Seenons announced on Wednesday, April 5, that it has raised €10M in a recent investment round.

Ahead of this funding, the Dutch startup had raised €6M in seed funding from CapitalT and Tablomonto Ventures.

The new funding announced today saw Invest-NL, Swiss Post and Shamrock Ventures invest alongside early backers CapitalT and Tablomonto Ventures.

Seenons, which calls itself a waste orchestrator, plans to use the new funding to further develop its circular platform.

Solving the waste challenge

Seenons is a tech startup that aims to use IT solutions and smart logistics to solve the growing challenge of waste.

Founded by Joost Kamermans, Jorn Eiting van Liempt, and Martin Kayser in 2019, Seenons has built a circular waste management platform that aims to ensure that residual waste does not end up in a landfill, or the ocean, or is being burned.

In July last year, Kamermans told Silicon Canals that people in Europe are aware of their waste being dumped in Asia or Africa and they don’t want it to be that way.

He also explains that the process of getting rid of waste costs a lot of money and many countries prefer to dump their waste elsewhere.

In order to solve this waste challenge, Seenons aims to “ensure minimum recycling and raw materials are either reused or even refused.”

With its platform, the startup wants to prevent a material from reaching the state of waste while promoting transparency in the industry.

Seenons does this by connecting waste disposers with logistics companies and logistics companies with waste processors in the most transparent way possible.

The idea being that as soon as waste is separated by companies, the platform can choose the right mode of transportation and processor capable of turning that waste into a product or raw material.

Europe’s largest circular platform

With Asia and Africa refusing to accept European waste, Europe is starting to pass its waste on to each other.

The Netherlands recently announced plans to import waste for incineration from Rome, which further highlights the urgent need for a waste-free world.

To create a waste-free world, countries and all those in the waste chain will have to embrace a circular economy.

Back in January, Seenons announced a 6-year partnership with the Dutch national government to embark on a path towards sustainable waste transportation.

The partnership will also ensure that government entities in the Netherlands adhere to circular usage of raw materials that presently get lost as industrial waste.

Kamermans does not shy away from the fact that the waste problem is complex but its platform is the most potent solution available to tackle this challenge yet.

With climate change leading to resource depletion and geopolitical tensions, there is now a call for greater autonomy and creation of a circular economy where resources are used efficiently.

“We aim to eliminate incineration, landfill use and dumping of waste in our oceans, as there is literally no time to waste,” says Kamermans.

Fund utilisation and investors

Since its founding, Seenons has seen hypergrowth with the Dutch scaleup growing to 75 employees and expanding beyond the Netherlands.

The company now plans to use the €10M funding to further develop its circular platform by focusing on internationalisation and improving its technology.

The startup will expand its “reduce, reuse, recycle” platform to multiple countries across Europe.

Elwin van Rooijen, investment manager at Invest-NL, says, “As Invest-NL, we see the urgency to transform from a linear to a circular economy.”

“Seenons’ platform is a key digital enabler for the circular economy connecting organisations with waste, logistic providers and processors to turn waste into valuable materials and products. As such, Seenons perfectly fits our investment strategy to support companies that accelerate the transition towards a circular economy,” adds Van Rooijen.

“We will invest heavily in our leading European circular platform, an independent platform that serves as a waste orchestrator to transform the economy from linear to circular,” explains Martin Kayser, co-founder and CTO of Seenons.