ZhanaSolutions – Fondo Acción

Investing in Impact

P4G has awarded the partnership with US $359,477 in grant funding. 

At the core of ZhanaSolutions’ business is the G-Trap unit. This equipment employs technology that separates up to 99% of oils and fats from wastewater collected in industrial kitchens. This brown grease is further processed at collection centers and then transported to a final conditioning site where it is purified to meet the necessary standard to become raw material for biodiesel production. 

ZhanaSolutions has two primary sources of income. One from a monthly fee for providing grease waste management services to food retail companies such as Frisby, Éxito, Crepes y Waffles, KFC and Hyatt Hotels. The second source is from the sale of purified brown grease to biodiesel producers. 

ZhanaSolutions plans to include sensors in its equipment that will allow the business to share impact indicators with its clients such as the amount of waste repurposed and liters of water saved from contamination. 

With the growing need for alternate cleaner sources of energy, ZhanaSolutions provides a cost-effective solution for meeting the demand for used cooking oil to aid biofuel production while also contributing to wastewater management. 

The partnership hopes to provide recommendations that can inform and update the existing discharge regulatory framework in Colombia to ensure that more companies manage their brown grease responsibly. 

Fondo Acción is a private Colombian fund with 23 years of experience in sustainable investments in environment and childhood solutions. In 2018, Fondo’s Impact Investment Fund (FIMI, for its name in Spanish) launched to support entrepreneurs concerned with the planet’s health and with social equity. 

Fondo Acción will support ZhanaSolutions pursue the enabling environment interventions that will incentivize industrial kitchens to better wastewater treating practices. It will also lead on producing case studies and policy briefs aimed at sharing learning with other similar actors in the brown grease collection and wastewater processing industry. 

During the partnership period, ZhanaSolutions aims to raise around US $1.8 million in investment, create 20 additional jobs, and reduce around 448 metric tons of carbon emissions. It also aims to increase the number of service sites from 192 in 2023 to about 2,000 by the end of 2025. 

The partnership comprises the following partners: ZhanaSolutions (lead business partners); Fondo Acción (lead administrative partner).