In 2022, this training lawyer created, with her brother, intact. The start-up offers an innovative system for producing neutral alcohol and vegetable proteins, based on legumes: plants with powerful ecological and regenerative virtues.
You are a lawyer by training. Where does your link with agriculture come from?
Fanny de Castelnau: He was born during childhood: my grandfather and my father worked in the food industry, more particularly in the field of the distillery … just like my brother with whom I co-founded my business.
However, during my higher education, I moved away from this sector by becoming a lawyer in industrial property, specialized in creating creation and innovation. I worked in the office for about eight years … before being recalled by my family history and an officer as a legal director for food companies, notably St-Hubert.
How did your retraining take place?
Fanny de Castelnau: In 2022, my brother, Alexis Duval, and I had the idea of creating our own distillery, on a model different from the one who currently prevails, at the very strong environmental impact.
We noted that there was no solution on the market likely to meet the expectations of decarbonation, biodiversity for neutral alcohol. For the time being, the latter, an ingredient essential for making cosmetic, pharmaceutical and spirits products, generally comes from agricultural raw materials, such as beets or wheat. In Europe, it emits two million tonnes of carbon every year. The Intact challenge is to provide low carbon alcohol and rethink this industry in order to meet ecological issues.
My desire to undertake was born thus, with this very strong desire to engage in the agricultural transition. Concretely, I developed part of the Intact project when I was still in office. I resigned when the concept was already well advanced.
Precisely, what is the principle of intact?
Fanny de Castelnau: My brother and I have the idea of producing a low carbon neutral alcohol, thanks to new technologies. How ? By rethinking upstream agricultural upstream and based on the transformation of legumes, that is to say lenses, peas, feverolles … These pulses are the natural fertilizers that were used in the past, before the Second World War, to enrich agricultural land: an era preceding that of the massive use of chemical nitrogen fertilizers.
By naturally capturing the nitrogen present in the air, legumes eat themselves … Clearly, they make it possible to regenerate the soils, preserve biodiversity, while going on chemical fertilizers … which represent 80% of the carbon emissions of a farm outside the breeding. Concretely, the introduction of legumes into agricultural rotations allows a reduction in chemical fertilizers for the following crops, of wheat for example.
In addition, Intact has developed patented technology to produce neutral alcohol with natural and low carbon processes suitable for legumes.
This innovation allows us to produce the only legume alcohol in the world which emits around 80% less than those existing on the market.
You have raised 55 million euros. How did you convince your investors?
Fanny de Castelnau: We had a partnership with our first investor, the agricultural cooperative Axéréal, bringing together 11,000 members, in the Val de Loire center. This made sense to them: with a valued outlet for their legumes, farmers can thus decarbonize, regenerate their land and reduce their use of imported chemical fertilizers … legumes constitute a solution. With Axéréal, we are developing together a legume agriculture sector in regenerative agriculture of 65,000 hectares….
On the other hand, in 2023, we were winners and therefore supported by France 2030, a program of the public investment bank, up to 14, 3 million euros.
Today, twenty-five experts and specialists work for intact, mainly in R&D. We also have a sales team. We will be seventy when opening our industrial site in the second half of 2025: in the meantime, we operate with pilot equipment.
With the opening of your site, your first products will be marketed. Neutral alcohol, but also, vegetable proteins …
Fanny de Castelnau: We have a circular production, without waste. The legume is made up of starch and protein. We use starch to produce our neutral alcohol. Then, with the protein, we manufacture vegetable protein for agrifood manufacturers and collective catering. This is an alternative to soybeans (very largely imported today), meat, eggs, dairy products, cookies …
Our customers aspire to be more virtuous ecologically: we offer them a turnkey solution.
We have notably signed a three -year contract on a large volume of alcohol with the group of spirits Rémy Cointreau, attracted by reducing both its carbon footprint while participating in the regeneration of French soils, now degraded to the point of creating yield drops by dint of using chemical fertilizers …
What advice would you give to our readers who are considering retraining?
Fanny de Castelnau : When we have a desire that drives us, I think we should not ask ourselves a billion questions, to which we will not be able to provide all the answers anyway. Add to this that there is never an ideal time to get started … Obviously, when it lends itself to it, it can be fruitful to follow a specialization, to get a new diploma before taking the plunge … But, at one point, you have to go … Then you adapt your project, we bounce back according to the returns obtained and the first results.
I do not regret my choice: Entrepreneur responds both to my convictions, but also to a desire for independence, a quest for freedom … which does not mean, far from it, that I work less. Developing a project with your vision requires deploying considerable energy!
Claire Bauchart
