French start-up Osmosun®, formerly Mascara NT, has big plans for the future, including plans to become a leading player in water treatment and brackish water desalination worldwide. If the young company, which specialises in providing innovative water treatment solutions using renewable energy, is thinking big, it’s mainly because it has just raised a substantial €10.75 million from institutional and individual investors, and seen the entry of new shareholders in its capital such as OKwind Group, a specialist in photovoltaic solutions dedicated to self-consumption.
“Thanks to these funds, we have begun to develop our organisation by recruiting new talent and expanding our local international presence in strategic regions such as North Africa, particularly Morocco. We have also signed new partnerships to consolidate our position in the desalination market while expanding into related markets”, explains Quentin Ragetly, President and CEO of Osmosun®.
Osmosun® has achieved this financial feat following its listing in July 2023 on Euronext Growth®, a Euronext trading platform designed for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking to raise capital to finance their growth.In recognition of this success, the young company received the Euronext IPO Award in the Small & Mid Cap IPO category on 19 March 2024. This was at the 12th annual conference in Paris Chartres, France. “Total demand for Osmosun® was 1.6 times higher than the initial offer,” says Euronext, the eurozone’s leading stock exchange with more than 1,900 issuers representing a total market capitalisation of €6.4 trillion.
Osmosun® supports access to drinking water in eight countries
In addition to strengthening its staff and expanding in North Africa, this new funding will enable Osmosun® to develop new solutions to support access to drinking water in remote areas of the continent.
The start-up is already present on the markets of Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Senegal, where it offers its easy-to-install Osmosun® containerised water treatment and brackish water desalination units, which operate using solar-powered mini-grids and back-up generators. The systems have a daily production capacity of between 2,000 m3 and 50,000 m3.
And in 2021, the French nugget has signed a partnership with its compatriot Ecosun Innovation to launch Osmo-Watt. This is a new solution that provides drinking water through an easy-to-deploy containerised system for remote and hard-to-reach areas. Osmo-Watt can produce between 5 and 100 m3 of drinking water a day using solar energy.
Inès Magoum