“Homemade is the most local”
The global market for at-home carbonation has taken off in recent years, with environmentally-conscious consumers turning away from single-use plastics. Instead of buying soda in plastic bottles from the store, customers can add bubbles and flavours to their tap water at home, using a sparkling water maker, refillable cylinders of CO2 and drink mixes.
Mysoda decided to take that concept of local even further, questioning why the empty CO2 cylinders needed to be shipped long distances when they could be filled locally. The company started by setting up a CO2 filling station for used cylinders in Helsinki to serve the Nordic markets.
When it entered a deal with retailer Coop in Switzerland in 2019, Mysoda hired a German subcontractor to serve that market. The company is currently building a filling station in France to serve customers there as well as in the Benelux countries.
“That’s our ideology: to be as local as possible. If we get customers in central Europe, we will need to open another factory there,” says Aura.
A need for working capital
The company’s rapid expansion and local focus has required a sizeable amount of capital, according to Aura.
“Nordea has been a good partner for us, backing our investments. We have a really good, open relationship. We share our information, and Nordea has been really flexible with our needs, finding solutions for us,” he says.
Riku Tiainen, a senior relationship manager in Nordea’s Startup & Growth unit in Finland has worked with Mysoda for around a year.
“This kind of business model needs quite a lot of working capital to set up new local production facilities. At the same time, the local operations will allow the company to save costs on shipping and logistics, while also limiting the transport emissions from shipping air and CO2 back and forth,” Tiainen says.
Working with companies in the growth stage, Tiainen says most companies he encounters are giving more thought to how they can be more sustainable, both to mitigate risks and identify opportunities.
“If the end-consumer is buying more sustainable products, shops are too, and all suppliers need to be interested in more sustainable models,” he says.