AI-driven environmental product management platform inks deal with Norway’s largest online grocer
The Oslo-based online grocer has gained notoriety with its lofty sustainability goals, using, for example, reusable cardboard boxes instead of plastic bags. Last year it claimed to be the first online grocer to put the carbon footprint of customers' shopping on their receipts.
Via the partnership, Oda will now be able to assess the product carbon footprint of its 6,600-strong food and drink product range, taking the product ingredients, composition and all production and distribution processes into account.
Inoqo claims its technology is heralding a new era in Scope 3 assessment and communication within the grocery industry by enabling grocery retailers to assess the impact of their thousands of food and drink products at an unprecedented level of scale and accuracy.
“The AI powered platform is able to reengineer the composition of thousands of F&B products based on the data the retailers have available today,” explained inoqo’s Founder and CEO Markus Linder. “It can consequently assess the impact of products while taking specific features of the product such as the likely country of origin of its ingredients, production processes, packaging, or transportation into account.”
Comparable data key
But with the absence of primary data for consumer communication, inoqo uses conservative data. This, said Linder, enables producers to provide more specific product data over time, which allows the technology to replace conservative assumptions by actual product data.
“More than 90% of the carbon emissions of grocery retailers originate from the thousands of food and beverage products they sell,” he said. “Consumers, investors, their employees and regulators are requesting them to swiftly join the race to net-zero emissions. With our inoqo platform we provide them with a flywheel that enables them to communicate the impact of their products to consumers, while getting an ever more granular view of the impact of their thousands of products over time. This way, grocery retailers can receive guidance on how to reduce their products impact by getting detailed breakdowns on their product and supplier hotspots, as well as, support their customers in transitioning towards a more sustainable diet. Oda, with the ambition to encourage its customers to adopt a more climate-friendly diet, found in inoqo the ideal partner with exceptional accuracy and scalability.”
Turi Pettersen, Head of Sustainability and DEI at Oda, explained the enthusiasm for inoqo’s technology. “We are genuinely impressed with what inoqo has to offer,” she said. “We believe that retailers can truly make a significant impact in this space by leading the industry - not only by setting an example for other retailers but also by challenging their producers to acknowledge and improve their carbon footprint. It all begins with a robust understanding of the current state through comparable data.”
The partnership came after inoqo closed a 7-figure round, after successfully pivoting to a B2B business model. inoqo initially launched in 2020 with a consumer-focused app designed to help end consumers understand the environmental impact of their daily grocery purchases.
"When more and more grocery retailers expressed interest in our technology, the team and I realized that we could have a much greater impact by assisting grocery retailers worldwide in understanding and managing the environmental impact of their food supply chains,” revealed Linder.
One inoqo angle investor is Heinz Hahn, former President FMCG of Mondelez, who explained: “It was clear to me that inoqo's vision was precisely addressing a critical need within the food industry and has the potential to become the leading AI-driven environmental product management platform.”
