French start-up maps raw materials to accelerate hydroalcoholic gel production in fight against COVID-19

Mandated by the French Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry (DGE), the Regional Health Agency (ARS) and the Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI), Paris-based iNEX Circular has created the platform to help hospitals and businesses source personal protective equipment.

iNEX Circular created this platform with one objective: to speed up production and ensure the supply of hydroalcoholic gel to hospitals. Concretely, users connect according to their profile:

• Manufacturers in the various industrial sectors (chemistry, cosmetics, glass, etc.) indicate their stocks of available raw materials using a very simple form. They fill in the available quantities of Ethanol/Alcohol, Isopropanol, Hydrogen Peroxide/Oxygenated water, Vegetable glycerol/Glycerine or containers such as flasks, bottles, jerrycans, cans, etc.

As for manufacturers of hydroalcoholic gel, they can easily identify distributors and producers of these raw materials, as well as companies with unused stock due to production stoppages, and get in touch to obtain the products they need for their own production.

• Hospitals have quick and easy access to all of the ARS-approved gel distributers throughout the country that can supply them.

 This is the other benefit of this platform: providing the DGE, the ARS and the CCIs with an overview of stocks and all of the companies listed in order to be able to organise logistics and quickly identify areas under strain.

Backed by EIT InnoEnergy, Europe’s sustainable energy innovation engine, iNEX Sourcing uses machine learning and data mining from more than 800k companies and 1M pages of data to compile its database. Specialising in the identification and qualification of waste for recyclers and manufacturers, the Parisian start-up quickly adapted its tool and used its technology to provide this information in record time.

Partnering with iNEX Circular is another EIT InnoEnergy start-up, Glowee, which will provide five full-time staff to help check the information that feeds into the database.

Just 4 days after its launch, the platform has already identified in eastern France:

• 149,315 litres of ethanol
• 500 litres of isopropanol
• 1992 litres of glycerine
• Thousands of containers

And this is just the beginning!

Following several successful projects with Veolia, Engie and GRDF, iNEX Circular has recently received a €200,000 investment from EIT InnoEnergy. The company plans to use the investment to expand across Europe into Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands.