Founded in 2007, ZenRobotics has been a loss-making company throughout its history.
Waste Finnish startup ZenRobotics, which develops robots for sorting, files for bankruptcy.
The matter is confirmed to HS by the company’s CEO Jarmo Ruohonenwho filed for bankruptcy at the Helsinki District Court on Friday.
According to Ruohonen, ZenRobotics, founded in 2007, has been a loss-making company throughout its history. The operation has been financed for about ten years mainly by the large US fund Invus, which has hoped for other owners to join as well.
“Invus already owns more than 80 percent of the company and did not want to put more money into the company. We’ve been looking for funding for some time, but we couldn’t find a solution in the desired time frame,” says Ruohonen, who started as CEO in May of last year.
“There is simply no more money in the cash register to cover the debts and expenses. We had no choice but to file for bankruptcy.”
by ZenRobotics invented system examines the waste with various sensors, such as metal detectors, infrared cameras and laser scanners.
By combining and analyzing the information, it can accurately identify different materials, so the robot can sort the pieces from the assembly line. In this way, poorly sorted waste can be sorted better. The company’s customers include, among others, Lassila & Tikanoja, which offers waste management services.
The amount of ZenRobotics’ losses has increased year by year, and in 2020 its operating profit was already in the red by around 6.3 million euros.
According to Ruohonen, however, the company’s situation began to look brighter over the past year and order backlogs had turned to growth. According to him, turnover of more than six million euros was expected for this year, while in 2020 it was 2.9 million euros.
“In part, the corona period even drove growth, when you no longer want to sort waste by hand. In that sense, it’s a terrible shame that this happened,” says Ruohonen.
According to him, “it’s quite a traditional technology story” happened to the company, because according to Ruohonen, ZenRobotics has perhaps focused a little too much on the development of technology rather than its commercialization.
“In the spring, there was the war in Ukraine, after which the financial market has come to an end. Funds and companies have been very cautious, and it has been difficult to get funding.”
Ruohonen cannot yet assess whether the company has any prospects for the future. He hopes that a company in the industry could take over ZenRobotics’ maintenance operations so that existing customers could continue to operate.
According to him, there has been demand for the company’s products, and the robots have been very useful for current customers. That’s why Ruohonen sees this as a business opportunity.
“But you should be quick. The job market is quite hot in Finland, and Zeni people are already being recruited elsewhere at a high speed,” he says.
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