Urban Mining Startup Scrapbees raises € 2.3M

ScrapBees is all about scrap metal. The company picks up the scrap where it is created. BonVenture, Faraday Venture Partners, and Cohors Fortuna Capital and Co. are now investing € 2.3 million in the company, founded in 2020.

Scrap metal and scrap is a huge topic in the real world, but hardly gets any attention in the digital world. The fairly young Neuss-based company ScrapBees, which operates under the German brand name “Schrottbienen”, now wants to change that. Founded in 2020 by Florian J. Kriependorf, Sebastian Kopsan and Thilo Hamm, Scrapbees offers a pick-up service for recycling scrap metal from commercial enterprises and private households. Urban mining is the appropriate buzzword here.

The ScrapBees concept has been a success so far: in 2022, the company has already generated a turnover of almost € 1M. Now the young entrepreneurs, who already employ around 50 people, want to move to the next stage. BonVenture, Faraday Venture Partners from Spain and the early-stage investor Cohors Fortuna Capital as well as business angels and a family office are investing € 2.3M in the company in this seed financing round.

"We are convinced by the smart technical solution, which digitally maps every movement of goods in real time, and its excellent operational implementation, which the experienced ScrapBees team offers as market leader: This not only ensures the return of metal raw materials to the cycle by means of urban mining, but also makes an important contribution to the transparency of origin and quality in the opaque raw materials market," says Nikolaj Klebert from BonVenture.

With the fresh capital, the startup wants to "expand the business, further develop the platform's processes and open up more cities". The company is currently active in the Ruhr region, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Nuremberg and Frankfurt am Main. The company already owns "more than 20 vehicles that collect scrap metal from households, craftsmen and businesses".

Media sources: Deutsche Startups, Venture Capital Magazin, Startup Valley News, Umwelt Wirtschaft, Etailment, Marketsteel, Fund Scene (German only!)