Pierre-André Galy
CEO and Co-Founder
Axibio, the France-based waste management company, was looking for a platform to remotely monitor Gaïaboxes – its proprietary biowaste collectors installed across France. Octave connected these Gaïaboxes from the edge to the cloud, creating a two-way communication between Axibio’s biowaste collectors on the field and its web applications. With Octave, Axibio can not only monitor and control its biowaste collectors, but can also, at any time, change what data it collects and how often it collects it, by easily making real-time changes to the edge.
Axibio, we are a young company. We design connected equipment and IoT infrastructures for the collection, treatment, and recovery of bio-waste. In Europe, we have a strong regulation and that regulation requires catering and food professionals and very soon municipalities to implement a separate collection for bio-waste. In order to send it to biogas or composting you need to produce energy and organic fertilizers. You have to know that in one metric ton of bio-waste you have the energetic equivalent to travel more than a thousand kilometers by car. On top of that you produce organic fertilizers roughly between 800 and 900 kilos of bio-waste, so it’s a resource, it’s not a garbage.Â
We started to work with Sierra Wireless when we launched our first product. This first product was designed for professionals. At that moment we needed a simple solution to collect data and to send it to the cloud. We also have a solution for municipalities which have to implement the separate collection of bio-wastes. Â
The Gaïabox is a street container where people come to drop off their bio-waste. That weight is converted into points that can be redeemed for bus tickets, swimming pool tickets, or other advantages. What I specifically needed for that solution to install the drop off containers was to orchestrate the data. We have a lot of functions and that equipment and access control to authorize people to drop their waste. To scale, we need to collect data and to have a remote comment on all of those functions. Developing that solution without Octave would have been very difficult. I think it would have taken two more years to put it on the market. Â
Our first customer is a city in Brittany in western France. Axibio has also other municipalities around that first city which are interested in purchasing the solutions. Octave can help us to scale up the project. Once we have made the first proof of concept in France we have the global IoT infrastructures to implement it worldwide. I consider that the project is a success.