Consultancy Climeaction is expanding into software with an application aimed at the multinational food industry after investing €2.8 million to grow the business.
The Cork-based firm, which advises PepsiCo and pharmaceutical giants Abbott and Johnson & Johnson among others, has developed its VSAg app to measure greenhouse gas emissions from farms.
Climeaction intends to sell the system to multinational food producers which want to account for and cut emissions from their supply chains, according to chief executive Paul Murphy.
“At the moment we are piloting it with a dairy farm in Ireland,” he said at the weekend.
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Climeaction is also in talks with “one of the largest buyers of agricultural products in Brazil” that could lead to trials with that organisation, Murphy said, although he could not name the business for confidentiality reasons.
Businesses have difficulty tracking so-called “scope three” emissions as they are produced by suppliers rather than by the organisations themselves, he said.
Farming is particularly difficult, as most calculations of emissions in many parts of the world rely on estimates based on the type of farm, its region and other factors, rather than actual data gathered on the ground.
Much of this stems from expensive and complex surveys, and the information is often fragmented and unreliable, Murphy said.
“If you think of farming in Ireland, it’s really well developed, with a lot of data on sustainability,” he said. “But if you look at the majority of countries in the world, they have no data.”
That means in many areas, businesses buying food from farmers struggle to comply with regulations and meet targets.
VSAg, a mobile app, tackles the problem by gathering information on the ground from individual farmers. The system uses video and AI to overcome language barriers and manage other challenges in underdeveloped regions, including lack of training or low literacy.
“Most of the world’s population has access to a mobile phone and can use video,” Murphy said. “We can ask farmers questions and take account of their inputs. That will provide us with the data to calculate the emissions from that farm.”
Charis Aherne, Climeaction’s head of agricultural impact and strategy, said the system was accessible and easy to use. She said too many developers expected “farmers to adapt to technology that does not reflect their reality”.
Climeaction has raised €2.8 million in total from Enterprise Ireland and through stockbrokers Davy EIIS Fund, investing almost €1 million on software development.
Murphy, whose background is in process and energy engineering, said the firm started as a consultancy, advising clients on calculating and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Our base business is industrial decarbonisation, but we are moving into software,” he said.
Climeaction opened a US office in September 2024 as president Donald Trump’s election campaign gained momentum, posing a big question mark over future climate policy.
Murphy acknowledged that “in hindsight you could not have picked a worse time” to start a climate-related business there.
However, revenue has picked up strongly in the US over the last six months.
There is now some certainty on tariffs, while organisations continue to pursue their own climate agendas, rather than relying on the government or regulation to set their goals.
Murphy said there is a big commitment globally to net zero emissions, so businesses are continuing to work on meeting pledges to cut carbon output.
“They are quietly doing the work in the background,” he said. “Our business in the US has been thriving for the last two quarters.”
