Neopouss

This interview details Neopouss, an indoor farming company based in France. The interview is with Quentin Jeandel, Co-Founder of Neopouss.

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What is the origin story of Neopouss?

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NEOPOUSS is a French urban farm growing over 30 species of microgreens in Toulouse city. We are two cofounders, Nicolas & Quentin.

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Microgreens are tiny plants highly concentrated in vitamins, nutrients and flavors and are therefore very promising to improve health and boost innovation in the gastronomy field. We sell our products to local restaurant chefs and we are leading research operations to optimize the cultivation and transformation process to make the use of microgreens easier and broader in a variety of applications, ranging from cuisine and gastronomy to dietary supplements including top athletes, armies and astronauts.

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Incorporating microgreens into our diets is very interesting for both our health and the environment. Indeed, microgreens can be grown locally everywhere, their cultivation requires no chemical input and few water and energy are needed throughout the process, from cultivation to consumption. This is a major innovation to transform our food system and reduce the environmental impact of the agricultural sector. 

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What are some of the biggest challenges facing Neopouss in the future?

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NEOPOUSS won the TechTheMoon call for projects organized by the French national space research center (CNES) to work on astronaut nutrition for future space exploration (Moon and Mars). We are working on the processing of microgreens from varieties selected for their interesting nutritional composition, which could be used as 100% natural nutritional supplements and also provide interesting and powerful flavors in astronauts' food.

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Microgreens are superfoods with a nutritional concentration up to 60 times greater than their adult counterparts and we are working to further concentrate these superfoods.

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Neopouss' future challenges are therefore as follows:

• To perpetuate the production of fresh microgreens for our local consumers, who are mainly chiefs
• To develop a range of 100% natural nutritional supplements based on microgreens for different types of users (athletes, militaries, astronauts and the general public).
  
  

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What is unique about Neopouss compared to competitors?

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NEOPOUSS seeks environmental excellence in all aspects of its activity. Its microgreens are grown without any chemical fertilizer nor pesticide. They are grown indoor, which allows NEOPOUSS to control every parameter: temperature, moisture, light. The cultivation system is circular so that water circulates in a closed loop and is constantly reused. The energy consumption is also very low due to the thermal characteristics of the basement which keeps cool all year long.

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NEOPOUSS uses only GMO-free seeds and, when possible, organically grown seeds. The cultivation cups and the delivery cardboard boxes are collected and reused in a zero-waste perspective. Even the substrate is vermicomposted, which helps NEOPOUSS recycles nutrients for plants.

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NEOPOUSS is also HAACP (Hazard analysis critical control point) certified, enabling us to work with distribution groups for our fresh microgreens.

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And last but not least, we are doing R&D with microgreens, which is not very common here in France for this kind of cultures.

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How do you measure the impact of your company so far? (Revenue, Employees, Customer Quantity, Production Volume) etc?

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To keep track of our company's metrics, we use a lot of digital tools. For example, all our production, order management, deliveries and invoicing are carried out using the online tools Airtable, Jotform, Make and Google Drive. We've optimized as many things as possible to save time on the main tasks. For example, our customers can place an order via a Jotform form (with real-time stock tracking) and from there an order is automatically created in Airtable and a delivery note issued in Google Drive. No human intervention is required, and once the IT system has been set up properly, there are no data-entry errors. What's more, this enables us to ensure the traceability of our products, from the seed grower to the end customer.

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As for production volumes, they are still manual and are decided each week on the basis of the previous week's sales and customer requests. But it's sometimes difficult to keep up with trends, and we often find ourselves either behind or ahead of market expectations in terms of microgreens varieties. At the same time, IT can't provide us with an answer to the demands and desires of chiefs.

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What have you learned that you wish you knew when you joined or started the company?

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Although we're both plant enthusiasts, we learned all about growing microgreens, with lots of tests, practice, failures and also a few successes (fortunately!). For my part, I had a lot of experience in hydroponics (but not with microgreens), which was very useful when we started our business.

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One of the aspects we would have liked to know more about was nutrition in general and the beneficial effects of the different nutrients on health. But we're learning every day from nutritionists and we rely a lot on our intuition.

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A greater knowledge of agronomy would have been a welcome addition, but not necessarily a prerequisite for developing an urban micro-farm. As long as you're curious and hard-working, nothing is impossible.

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As for all the other aspects of setting up and running a business, this wasn't our first company, so we already knew quite a lot about this area from our past experiences, so it all came naturally.

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How can people connect with you or learn more about Neopouss?

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People can connect with us or learn about us through our website (https://neopouss.com), Instagram (@neopouss) or Linkedin. We are digital growers ☺

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Maybe a video you can add to the post : (275) Culture indoor à Toulouse - YouTube

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