Key Takeaways
- Irene Rosique Conesa, co-founder and Managing Director of Nuvio Planet, built her expertise in environmental science and data-driven sustainability during a decade at BASF.
- Nuvio Planet spun out of BASF to serve a broader market and act more quickly in response to changing sustainability, regulatory, and efficiency demands.
- The company focuses on farm-level environmental footprinting in the animal protein value chain, integrating with feed formulation and farm management systems.
- A collaboration with KWS has demonstrated the platform’s ability to reduce assessment time and support low-carbon crop adoption while delivering auditable data across the value chain.
- By 2035, Irene Rosique Conesa envisions Nuvio Planet as a leading environmental intelligence standard, supporting both large corporations and SMEs and contributing to harmonized eco-labeling at retail.
From BASF to Nuvio Planet: A Decade of Data-Driven Sustainability For Irene Rosique Conesa
For Irene Rosique Conesa, the journey to co-founding Nuvio Planet began inside one of the world’s largest chemical companies. With a background in environmental science and sustainability, she spent around ten years at BASF working in a data-driven sustainability team focused on animal nutrition.
“I had the chance to really help companies measure and understand their environmental impact,” she explained. Over time, a recurring pattern emerged: companies had data spread across multiple systems and struggled to translate operational information into environmental indicators. “They all had the data… but it was very complex to translate their operational data into an environmental impact,” she said.
To address this, Irene and her team developed a software solution within BASF that automated data collection and modeling for the animal protein industry. That internal tool became the basis for Nuvio Planet, initially created inside BASF and later transformed into an independent company.
Why Nuvio Planet Spun Out of BASF
The decision to spin out was driven by two core motivations: market reach and agility.
Within BASF, Nuvio Planet could only serve BASF customers, despite wider interest in environmental intelligence solutions across the sector. “The demand for these solutions was beyond BASF customers in the animal nutrition space,” Irene Rosique Conesa explained. Exploring broader opportunities led the team into an incubator to validate other segments and markets.
The second driver was the need for speed. Operating inside a multinational meant working within established processes and timelines. According to Irene, this was increasingly misaligned with the pace of market change. “We needed to be faster, we needed to be more agile,” she noted. As an independent company, Nuvio Planet can now react more quickly to customer requests, regulatory developments, and new use cases. “Environmental intelligence is becoming the new competitive edge. Companies that measure precisely will outperform those that guess.”
Nuvion Planet's Deep Specialization in Animal Protein Value Chains
“You can’t improve what you can’t measure and most of the food system is still flying blind. Farm-level precision changes that completely.”
Nuvio Planet differentiates itself through its focus on animal protein value chains and the maturity of its models. The first version of these models was developed roughly 15 years ago and has been refined repeatedly with customer feedback.
Where some corporate solutions apply average emission factors “per pig” or “per chicken,” Nuvio Planet operates at farm level. “We need to enter the farm operations. How many animals, what do they eat, what’s the protein of the feed… We measure the farm-level product footprint,” Irene said. This granularity allows users to identify hotspots—whether manure, electricity, or feed composition—and act on them.
The company also fully owns its code base, which is an important point for customers. “We own our software, we know our code… we can respond to our customers really fast and customize if they have some specific operation,” she added. Integrations via APIs with feed formulation software and farm management systems mean users do not need to enter the same data in multiple places, simplifying adoption.
The KWS Collaboration: From Pilot to Global Rollout
One of Nuvio Planet’s recent milestones is its collaboration with KWS, a seed company that has developed low-carbon hybrid rice and other crops. Using Nuvio Planet, KWS measured the environmental footprint of animal protein value chains that start with its crops.
With Nuvio Planet’s models and KWS’s crop data, downstream customers can calculate the environmental impact across the entire value chain, up to the retailer. Irene highlighted that KWS can now “prove with data the environmental benefit or the environmental advantage of their crops along the value chain up to what we basically eat.”
Following successful farm trials in Germany, KWS plans to roll out the solution globally. Nuvio Planet supports this by drawing on globally applicable standards and country-specific factors, enabling the platform to reflect local conditions while maintaining methodological consistency.
Irene Rosique Conesa On Regulation, Efficiency, and Harmonization Efforts
Regulatory environments around sustainability are evolving rapidly, with both new measures and deregulation occurring in different markets. Irene sees this as part of a broader shift in how companies frame their goals: “It’s not right about sustainability but rather efficiency,” she said, noting that companies increasingly link environmental performance to energy use, input costs, and carbon-related taxes.
Nuvio Planet’s methodology is grounded in international standards such as ISO 14040, ISO 14044, and sectoral guidance like FAO LEAP and PEFCR for feed. The company has also obtained third-party review and certification for its models. “We had an auditor looking at our code, comparing it with the standards and saying this is according to the standards,” Irene explained, emphasizing the importance of transparency.
In parallel, Nuvio Planet participates in broader harmonization initiatives. Irene cited ongoing work with the OECD, which is compiling a global database of farm-level tools and methodologies, and Nuvio Planet’s involvement in the European eco-labeling scheme aimed at making environmental labels on food products more consistent.
Irene Rosique Conesa On Managing Data Overload While Delivering Actionable KPIs
A common challenge in sustainability reporting is the proliferation of data that companies struggle to interpret. Irene acknowledged the issue, recalling her own experience with “tabs and tabs and tabs” of spreadsheets. Yet she stressed that detailed data remains essential to building meaningful KPIs.
“At the end what the company needs is one, two, three, four KPIs that were calculated in 20 different spreadsheets,” she said. Nuvio Planet’s role is to integrate these inputs into a single platform and present insights in a form that supports decision-making, rather than overwhelming users with raw numbers.
The company also collaborates with universities and research institutions that produce large volumes of scientific data. The aim is to filter this information so that only elements relevant to current industrial needs are integrated into the platform, helping to “cut the noise” and keep the focus on actionable measures.
Looking Toward 2035: Nuvio Planet as an Environmental Intelligence Standard As Seen By Irene Rosique Conesa
When asked to project to 2035, Irene Rosique Conesa outlined a clear ambition: “Nuvio Planet is leading the environmental intelligence standard. Companies are measuring and improving their environmental impact with Nuvio Planet,” she said. Crucially, this vision includes not only major corporations but also small and medium-sized enterprises, which she wants to “catch up with the big guys.”
Another part of that vision is a transparent labeling system in supermarkets, where environmental footprint information is displayed in a harmonized way. As labeling schemes evolve and converge, Nuvio Planet aims to provide the data infrastructure that makes such transparency possible.
