gironde

Established in Gironde since 2019, Toopi Organics aims to collect two million liters of human urine per year, in order to transform them into biostimulants making it possible to reduce the share of chemical fertilizers in European agriculture.

Le Figaro Bordeaux

To fight climate change, every action counts, even emptying your bladder. Without knowing it, the supporters who use the urinals of the rugby village, set up in Bordeaux for the World Cup, are helping to reduce water waste and reduce the use of fertilizers in agriculture, because their urine is then harvested, processed and transformed in Gironde.

The principle is simple. Wherever the Gironde start-up Toopi Organics has established partnerships (at Futuroscope, on the highways managed by Vinci, during festive events such as the Huma Festival), the female and male urinals are connected to collection tanks, which contain a stabilizer, to preserve the qualities of the urine. Once these “deposits» harvested, they are sent to the company’s factory in Loupiac-de-la-Réole (Gironde), and are filtered to eliminate pathogens and possible pharmaceutical residues. The urine then undergoes fermentation by the addition of a bacterial strain. “Urine is fermented, like grapes to make wine.», explains Michael Roes, co-founder of Toopi Organics.

Once processed, the urine can be used by farmers. “For the same yield, the product makes it possible to reduce by 30 to 50% the mineral fertilizers that we usually put in the fields.», specifies Michael Roes. This biostimulant constitutes “an ecological solution to reduce our dependence on imported phosphate fertilizers from mining, without affecting yields and reducing fertilization costs for farmers», Adds Alexandra Carpentier, general director of the start-up.

This reuse of human urine also has other advantages. “Every time we collect urine, it means that we don’t’did not pee in drinking water», recalls the president of Toopi Organics, which implies significant water savings, because one liter of urine collected is equivalent to twelve liters of water saved. In its Loupiac-de-la-Réole factory, the company can treat 250,000 liters of urine per year and produce the same quantity of fertilizer.

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Usable in organic farming

Victim of its success, the challenge for this company is now to expand. “This is the bottleneck, because we have already secured a lot of urine deposits. What prevents us from going further is our production capacity», explains Michael Roes. On September 12, the start-up announced fundraising of 16 million euros (including 3.8 million euros from the Ecological Transition Agency and 1.1 million euros as part of grants plan “France 2030), which should accelerate its development.

Its objective, with soon a new factory in Gironde and another in Belgium, is to collect and transform two million liters of urine per year, thus preserving 24 million liters of drinking water. For the moment, the Gironde company has around thirty employees, but by 2027, with this new financing, Toopi Organics is banking on a turnover of 15 million euros and the employment of 130 people. , in Gironde and Belgium. Its microbial biostimulant, Lactopi Start, is already authorized for marketing in France and five other European countries.

«Our first product has been the subject of more than 40 agronomic trials over the past three years. It has received the green light from regulatory authorities and can now be used in organic farming», explains Alexandra Carpentier. “With this fundraising, our objective is to deploy a range of urine-sourced biostimulants on more than 600,000 agricultural hectares in Europe.“. The start-up intends to develop three new biostimulants by 2027, always from this easily available resource that is human urine.

2023-09-18 10:54:09
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