Tryon: local methanization

Tryon is a French start-up offering a small-scale methanization system for more local organic waste recovery.

Jimmy Colomies, one of the founders, agreed to answer a few of our questions. Many thanks to him \o/

solution Tryon

What environmental issues does Tryon address?

Bio-waste (food scraps) represents the equivalent of 1/3 of our household and professional waste production, i.e. around 20 Mt/year. This waste is made up of 80% water and organic matter from agricultural production. Yet it is still massively collected with the rest of the household waste and transported to destruction sites by landfill or incineration, which in their case makes no economic, environmental or social sense.

However, two regulations exist to remedy this situation:

  • Grenelle 2 de l’Environnement has imposed since 2016 a selective sorting with a view to recovery for all professional players producing more than 10t/year.
  • The Loi Transition Énergétique (Energy Transition Law) makes this obligation mandatory for all players by January1, 2024, including private individuals, under the responsibility of the public authorities.

Current recovery solutions tend to be “large-scale” solutions, which are suited to large producers (farmers, agri-food manufacturers…) whose waste is localized and massified, but less so to the newly concerned small producers who are spread across the whole territory. This requires long-distance collection, which is costly and has a high impact.

What does Tryon offer?

Our solution is a standard, modular unit for small-scale methanization of biowaste, with the aim of recovering it locally and reducing the associated collection logistics. The solution can reduce collection costs by up to 50% for a similar treatment cost.

Solution tryon

What added value do you bring to your customers?

In addition to the main economic added value, the advantages of our solution for both private and public waste operators (waste syndicates, municipalities, agglomerations, etc.) are ..:

  • Simplicity and speed: with prefabricated units requiring little work (simple slab) and installed in 1 year instead of 4 to 8 years for conventional “large-scale” units.
  • Customizable and scalable: the standard, modular nature of the system means that the desired functionalities can be selected, and processing capacity can be scaled up over time in line with local needs in response to the introduction of selective sorting, from 1,000 to 8,000 t/year.
  • Enhanced acceptability: with a design that reduces or eliminates all potential nuisances (visual, traffic, odors, risks, etc.)
  • Turnkey: with a complete offer from project development to financing, operation and maintenance.

Have you identified any competitors? If so, what are your competitive advantages?

There are two main competitors today, the English SEAB and the French Bee&Co, who offer solutions on a smaller scale. The competitive advantage of our solution is twofold:

  • A scale that enables us to provide all the essential functionalities, with a more attractive business model that meets the needs of all the players in a given territory
  • A turnkey solution

What is currently preventing you from fully occupying your market?

First and foremost, we need visibility, especially with local authorities who are not necessarily familiar with this new scale. To this end, we are in the process of deploying an initial reference system in the Yvelines department, which will manage the bio-waste of the department’s 116 secondary schools, in order to demonstrate the benefits of the circular scheme and the business model, the technical aspects of which have already been validated on various prototypes.

Here are a few articles about them: