In the world of technology, Toulouse is often rightly associated with the aerospace and aeronautics sectors. While these fields contribute to its expertise and reputation, they also serve as powerful catalysts, drawing other rapidly growing sectors such as greentech and agritech into their orbit. Jean Daydé, director of the Lamothe campus owned by the PURPAN Engineering School, explains, “The strengths of Toulouse are inherent in its historical industries, with aerospace enabling the development of embedded systems, and space providing essential geolocation for sustainable agriculture and control of inputs, resulting in savings of 60 to 80%.”
This agricultural domain produces 1 million litres of milk per year. It also serves as a place for education and research focusing on animal welfare, agro-ecological transition, energy farming – including anaerobic digestion and photovoltaics – and biodiversity. It is part of a rapidly growing agritech ecosystem alongside greentech in the Toulouse metropolitan area, which presents compelling arguments regarding its impact.
Favourable ground
As a demonstration of its commitment to greentech and cleantech, the Occitanie Region has allocated €150M euros for green hydrogen until 2030 through the HyDeO sector development plan. By 2025, a techno-campus will host the largest European centre for research, testing, and technological innovation in Francazal, with the ambition of becoming the campus for innovative and decarbonized mobilities. Toulouse aims to be an experimentation ground, notably through the Territorial Climate-Air-Energy Plan (PCAET), to assert the metropolis as a regional leader in energy transition and to innovate for exemplarity, promoting widespread adoption of best practices.
A fertile environment
According to Jean Daydé, “a lot of resources are deployed in the metropolis to develop connections among various stakeholders, including incubators, industry players, researchers, investors, and local authorities.” Indeed, Toulouse boasts 20,000 square meters of nurseries, numerous accelerators and incubators, and over 30 support structures for startups. “There are probably not many places in France where it is as easy to connect with researchers or industrial partners, and the common thread in these collaborations is mutual assistance, especially in export,” rejoices Jérémy Fain, CEO of Blue Water Intelligence. The capital of Occitanie has also recently welcomed the second incubator of the GreenTech Verte network. Located on the premises of Météo France within the National School of Meteorology, it focuses on the theme of connected objects for the benefit of energy transition.
Many fields to invest in
Toulouse excels in various impactful sectors, including energy, environment, agriculture, and the circular economy. In the field of water, Jérémy Fain acknowledges the fortunate presence of “cross-disciplinary expertise in hydrology from some of the best research laboratories in France, along with leaders in space technology in Europe. Toulouse also benefits from a significant concentration of brains and talents.” In terms of intelligent and sustainable mobility, the metropolis notably has the TOTEM cluster (Transport d’Occitanie Terrestre Et Maritime), which brings together companies, academic institutions, and research laboratories in the automotive, rail, and maritime sectors.
Leading figures
Alongside Blue Water Intelligence, which develops a solution to monitor and anticipate river flow, numerous Toulouse-based startups have already made a name for themselves in their respective fields. For example, Naïo Technologies designs agricultural robots to help farmers optimise their working time, and Water Horizon develops technology to recover lost industrial heat, store it, and distribute it as clean energy. Immoblade, selected among the ‘100 startups to invest in 2021’ by Challenges magazine, has its new generation of passive glazing labeled as GreenTech Innovation by the Ministry of Ecological Transition.