BRGM has acquired a 40% holding, via its subsidiary SAGEOS, in SOLTRACING, a French safety solution for excavated earth, as part of a share capital increase.
23 January 2020
Michèle Rousseau, the BRGM's Chair and Managing Director, and Emmanuel Cazeneuve, Chairman of Hesus

Michèle Rousseau, the BRGM's Chair and Managing Director, and Emmanuel Cazeneuve, Chairman of Hesus.

© BRGM

BRGM, the French Geological Survey, has acquired a 40% holding in SOLTRACING, a French safety solution for excavated earth. HESUS, the French management company for excavated earth and co-founder of SOLTRACING, is making a significant contribution to the operation with the acquisition of a 50% equity share.

Developing a new and more efficient traceability service

Of the 260 million tonnes of waste materials produced each year by the construction industry, 70% is excavated earth. The steadily increasing volume of construction waste demands ambitious and transparent management of excavated earth flows to ensure that their re-use, as a real alternative to landfill, meets the challenges of the circular economy and the need to reduce the risks of pollution transfer.

Traceability of excavated earth is central to the SOLTRACING model developed since 2015. Created by HESUS and the Flemish construction confederation, it offers an integrated safety solution for excavated earth (SISE).

The BRGM's acquisition, via SAGEOS, of an equity share in SOLTRACING is in continuity with the collaborative research projects undertaken by the two organisations and the pooling of their experience and know-how to develop a new and more efficient traceability service. This is a fully integrated digital system that will provide extremely rapid confirmation of the acceptability of excavated earth to be re-used in an operation, and to validate the compliance of all waste evacuated from a worksite.