An encounter that turned the construction world upside down. The adventure began in 2012, when Jean-Baptiste and Olivier met at university. A civil engineer and a management engineer in the making, they very quickly joined forces in a business creation project at UCLouvain.
The adventure began in 2012, when Jean-Baptiste and Olivier met at university. A civil engineer and a management engineer in the making, they very quickly joined forces in a business creation project at UCLouvain.
It was when they met a researcher at the university that hemp began to make its way into their minds. With dreams and ideas in their heads, they launched themselves full of passion in the development of their project.
What binds them? A passion for construction, the ambition to have a positive impact on the environment and their entrepreneurial spirit. And for these same reasons, a third young engineer quickly joined them in this exciting adventure. They were convinced that all their ambitions lay in a plant with infinite assets, but which was still too little known at the time: hemp.
Thanks to hours spent in a garage studying, testing and experimenting, they were able to confirm their intuitions and become fully aware of the thermal, acoustic and hygrometric properties of hemp. All that remained was to convince the rest of the world.
To achieve this, it was essential to make hemp easier to use. It was already being used as an insulating material at the time, but it was not necessarily practical. Their brilliant idea was to offer hemp in block form and thus make buildings with hemp blocks accessible to all contractors. At first it was a small-scale project, but very soon it became a reality thanks to an industrialised process.
At that point, they had everything they needed to take it to the next level, but there was still one big challenge. To replace the prejudices about hemp with all its exceptional performances in the minds of the construction sector.
It was a bit like an elephant in the room... Jean-Baptiste, Olivier and Anthony arrived with an incredibly innovative idea in a rather traditional world. Doors and walls, they took them on...
But having experimented with it in all directions, they never stopped believing in the product and its future. All it took was convincing a few people, and from site to site, positive testimonials poured in. Their perseverance, an exceptional product and the positive impact of the projects carried out are certainly the reasons for the current success of IsoHemp.
With a team of more than 30 people, soon a production capacity of 5,000,000 hemp blocks per year (5 houses per day), and requests from all over the world, the 3 co-founders do not intend to stop there.
How do they keep the flame alive and spread it throughout their team and the construction industry?
It's very simple with a product that makes so much sense. A product that saves 2,000 tons of CO² every year while providing energy performance and unparalleled comfort to the inhabitants of hemp block houses. A product that can be reintegrated into the earth and reborn from its seeds. It deserves to be told to future generations and Olivier has understood this well, because when he tells the story of the three little pigs to his children, he replaces the brick with hemp.
Visionary? The rest of the IsoHemp success story will tell us... but it's really off to a good start!
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