Searoutes raises $2.7M to cut shippers’ GHG emissions

Searoutes, the Marseilles-based startup that helps shippers reduce the carbon footprint of their transport, has unveiled a new, €1.3 million (about $1.5 million) financing round.

The seed investment round is led by WSB Beteiligungs, the venture capital firm founded by Wolf Scheder.

It includes several investors with expertise in logistics and freight transport, including OHB venture Capital GmbH, the venture capital arm of the OHB Group, venture capital firm Team ABC venture, French shipping major CMA CGM, and Thomas Sørbø, founder of the ocean freight rate benchmarking and market intelligence platform, Xeneta.

“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,” Wolf Scheder-Bieschin, leading the seed investment round through WSB Beteiligungs GmbH, said.

In August this year, the startup was also awarded a grant of €1.1 million from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF), bringing Searoutes’ total funding to €2.4 million (around $2.7 million). 

Created in 2019 by 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 and Ceva Logistics. Technology to help shippers reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Reducing GHG emissions

Currently, 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Searoutes sees an opportunity to replace outdated spreadsheets with its data rich API and developed a SaaS platform using its own data and proprietary algorithms to help shippers find ways to reduce their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.

Specifically, Searoutes’ technology can process and transform extensive datasets of freight information into meaningful information. The startup 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.

Searoutes aims to become the standard in GHG transparency for freight transport, and its “data first” approach is already leading the way, according to the company. 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.

“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,” Pierre Garreau, Founder and Managing Director, said.

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.”