
Building Impact: Agrolinera Insights from SoTecIn Factory Phase 1
Find out more about Agrolinera, their Phase 1 experience and mission for circular industry transformation, as one of SoTecIn Factory Open Call 1 Phase 2 winners receiving up to EUR 85K funding for the pre-market tech demonstration of their social innovation solution.
Can you briefly explain your solution and its key mission? What is your current business model?
Agrolinera seeks to transform dairy communities by digitising the collection process of manure and cheese whey. By doing this, we make their valorization possible, and allow traditional farms to grow without impacting their environment or the climate. Our key mission is to support the activity and population of dairy rural communities while protecting their environment and traditional way of life.
While the farmers are the users of the collection system, our clients are the waste treatment plants who convert the manure into biogas. For them our system makes the manure more efficient to collect, preserving its energy potential.
What long-term, systemic change do you aim to achieve in the industry? How has the SoTecIn Factory program, particularly Metabolic’s workshop on building systemic impact strategy, influenced your approach to triggering that change?
We want to empower traditional dairy farmers to grow their size and income without being constrained by territory or waste logistics. Our approach avoids local externalities and creates value for waste processing plants, making farmers part of the energy value chain as suppliers.
SoTecIn Factory programme structure and Metabolic’s tools were relevant in helping us understand how to scale our impact, starting from our pilot. During the program, we refined our business plan with a systemic perspective.
Our systemic impact strategy drives a cultural shift, positioning farmers as essential in food production, environmental conservation, and green energy. We’re proud that it supports generational replacement and sustainable growth in traditional farming.
In Phase 1, you joined workshops and mentoring to boost your capacity for systemic impact in the EU’s circular industry. What valuable skills, tools, or connections did you gain, and which parts were most helpful?
The program helped us develop critical skills and tools to scale our project. We’re particularly happy with the steward ownership solution presented by Metabolic, which boosts user engagement and makes pilot replication easier by aligning interests. SoTecIn Factory’s practical capacity building and skilled mentors were invaluable, and the co-creation session, guided by our mentor, revealed key insights into our solution. The effort required was well rewarded.
What support do social impact ventures with circular economy strategies need to be impactful and resilient? Has SoTecIn Factory Phase 1 provided any insights to improve your business sustainability?
A critical aspect for any early stage entrepreneur, the holistic action plan session -often neglected- was an eye opener. The sense of community and belonging is essential to build resilience at early stages or for first-time entrepreneurs. The crossing of the desert is easier (and often, only possible) in company.
There is no impact without survival. Being part of the programme community makes us more courageous when we need to be, and more informed to face the challenges. This network is a key takeaway from Phase 1 that inspires and gives us moral support as we go forward.
In Phase 1 of SoTecIn Factory, you co-developed your solution with a Market Validator, an industry actor and potential customer. How did this refine your solution and enhance your understanding of sustainable industry challenges? How will it prepare you for building and testing your Phase 2 demonstrator?
The structured discussion helped us identify key pains for our potential client and how our solution’s “pain relievers” addressed them for both users and clients. We explored how the dairy industry values these advantages and their potential for monetization. We’ll use these insights as a checklist during the pilot to address “user pains” and improve the process and prototype. Additionally, we’ll showcase the system to biogas plants in the pilot environment, demonstrating the aspects that we understood were most valued during the co-creation, while carefully gathering feedback.
What inspired you to adopt social initiatives in your business? Was there a specific moment or experience that sparked this decision?
Initially, we focused on manure logistics for biogas projects, but interviews with dairy farmers revealed that waste management was limiting their growth and generational replacement. We realized the value of our solution wasn’t just “downstream” for biogas plants, but “upstream” in dairy communities. The interviews also made evident that the problems of small farmers were widespread and structural, threatening entire rural communities dependent on dairy farming to sustain other businesses and their populations.
We then just realized we were doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Refocusing in our case was easy and the logical thing to do. Although our clients still use the biogas plants as treatment points, the system serves the collection needs of a farming community, who uses it.
How do you stay focused on your mission for a sustainable industry, and how has the SoTecIn Factory program supported you? Additionally, what were your key takeaways from the Phase 1 Steward Ownership workshop, and why is it an important governance approach for mission-driven businesses, even if you haven’t adopted it?
Setting up a pilot demands daily focus and commitment from all stakeholders. The commitment and objectives defined when we presented this project to the SoTecIn Factory programme make this focus clear to everyone involved. Developing the Demo Implementation Plan (DIP) helped us create a well-rounded Phase 2 plan based on our prototype but aligned with systemic goals from Phase 1.
For us, the steward ownership model allows us to replicate and accelerate adoption while aligning stakeholder incentives for efficient long-term operation. We focus on system operation, not ownership. This model encourages users to adapt their practices to the way we propose, and makes it more attractive for community leaders to support adoption. However, in the initial stages, we need to act as a demonstrator before handing over control to the community.
Balancing your mission with personal well-being can be challenging for social entrepreneurs. What’s your secret ingredient to achieving this balance? Are there any tips, tricks, or tools from the SoTecIn Factory Program—whether from webinars, mentorship, or informal chats—that you’d share with other innovators?
There is no secret ingredient for work-life balance, just different recipes. We took the added risk of starting Agrolinera as a founding couple, a big financial and career bet, but also making a more cohesive managing team for the company. It means more hours, but shared overtime is easier.
During the programme, we developed a Holistic Action Plan which was very useful for self-reflection, and sharing experiences with other participants along a structured conversation reassured us we might not be that “crazy”, after all. Also, “coffee chats” led by one of the mentors also provided space for discussing “out-of-syllabus” topics, strengthening our sense of community and reminding us we don’t walk this path alone.
For the end, what are your expectations of Phase 2 of the SoTecIn Factory programme? What are your general goals for the next 6-12 months?
We value the feedback and advice from SoTecIn Factory mentors as we implement the pilot, ensuring we measure impact. We also aim to promote our pilot within the SoTecIn Factory network. In 6 months, our collection operation will be demonstrated with the first operational and impact metrics, making the pilot replicable with valuable set of “lessons learned” for the next implementation.
In 12 months, we plan to expand the pilot to onboard more users, and hopefully work on developing other projects in similar communities. Within a 12 month frame, after demonstrating our solution and model, we aim to raise capital to grow and develop the equipment needed to expand our system from whey to manure collection.