Natixar
Marseille, 2023, Svetlana Cranga and Jean-Marc Le Peuvedic launch the startup Natixar. The former is an expert in industrial strategy and business development, the latter is a software architect and blockchain specialist. With Natixar, they set themselves the objective of making supply chains for critical and industrial metals traceable, certifiable, and responsible.
Their project was born from an observation: producers and traders of metals (precious or industrial) face growing pressure to prove the sustainability, traceability, and ESG compliance of their products. Existing traceability solutions are costly or even inaccessible to small players, and this hinders access to high-value-added markets (international exchanges, buyers subject to CBAM, EUDR, and other regulatory requirements).
This is where Natixar offers a digital platform that combines blockchain traceability, AI, physical metal marking, and satellite monitoring.
For Svetlana Cranga, joining the TEAM incubator means finding scientific, technical, and strategic support to develop an industrializable, interoperable, and high-impact solution. The idea is to collaborate with the research teams at Mines Saint-Etienne to integrate the latest scientific advances.
TEAM will provide its expertise in data science and the valorization of scientific results. Joint projects, internship supervision, CIFRE PhD projects (Industrial Agreements for Training through Research), this collaboration is a real springboard for strengthening the links between fundamental research and industrial applications.
By joining TEAM, Natixar’s objective also becomes that of the incubator: to enable players in mining, recycling, and trading to access demanding markets via digital certificates that can be integrated into Digital Product Passports and regulatory systems.
Petite Tortue
Victor André, a recent ICM graduate from Mines Saint-Etienne, has just joined our TEAM incubator with his startup Petite Tortue.
His company’s project is to design baby bottles made from 100% high-performance bio-based material, in response to the phenomenon of microplastics and endocrine disruptors to which babies are the most vulnerable and most exposed.
During his academic career, Victor demonstrated his interest in entrepreneurship. He benefited from student-entrepreneur status, served as president of the Junior-Enterprise at Mines Saint-Etienne, and is now a self-employed entrepreneur offering no-code services and innovation process consulting.
The integration of Petite Tortue within TEAM is an opportunity for the startup and its founder to benefit from advice from faculty researchers and also to take advantage of already fruitful collaborations: submission of student projects, participation in events…
As part of this collaboration, Victor André also wishes to highlight his student-entrepreneur journey by serving on the alumni council of the Junior-Enterprise. He also serves as a speaker in the Innovation, Creation, and Entrepreneurship Project (PRICE), a training program in innovation and entrepreneurship integrated into the ICM curriculum at Mines Saint-Etienne.
We wish these two ambitious young companies a long and successful future!
