Cornet Vincent Ségurel assists the founders of TchaoMegot with their first round of funding to scale up to industrial scale

This Oise-based company has developed the very first process capable of removing pollution from cigarette butts in an environmentally-friendly way, without using water or toxic solvents, in order to recycle the material. The company has opened up its capital for the first time, with Rives Croissance, a subsidiary of Banque Populaire Rives de Paris, taking a minority stake.

The aim of this fund-raising is to propel TchaoMegot towards industrial scale by investing €3.6 million in a new depollution machine, capable of processing up to 300 tonnes of cigarette butts a year.

A team comprising partner Benjamin Chevalier and lawyer Marie Amourelle from Cornet Vincent Ségurel advised the founders of TchaoMegot on the fund-raising campaign.

TchaoMegot provides companies and local authorities with awareness-raising and communicating collection points for installation (in companies, tobacconists, parks, smoking areas, etc.). Once the ashtray and collection bag have been filled, the latter is sent to their site in the Oise region to clean up the butts.

Since 2020, TchaoMegot has been working for the ecological and local recycling of cigarette butts. It now has 26 employees and is growing fast. It operates in 3 areas: collecting, cleaning up and recycling cigarette ends. Its innovation is based on a process that extracts toxic materials in concentrate, without water or toxic solvents. The end emerges as a completely clean, odourless material. The fibre is then recycled as a thermal insulator for buildings, but also as a down jacket for textiles.

The recycled material is REACH-certified, ensuring the safety of products on the recycling market. The company, based in Hauts-de-France, contributes to the circular economy by avoiding soil and groundwater pollution. The Greentech Innovation label, acquired and awarded in 2021 by the French Ministry for Ecological Transition, guarantees the performance of their depollution methods and ensures a recycling solution that complies with sustainable development.

Speakers:

Directors and founders: Julien Paque, Arnaud Paque

Investor: Rives Croissance (Swen Schaller)

Advisors :

Founding lawyers: Cornet Vincent Ségurel (Benjamin Chevalier, Marie Amourelle)

Investor lawyers: Lamartine Conseil (Bintou Niang, Nadia Driouich)

Photo credit: TchaoMegot