Safi Sana

Aart van den Beukel has over twenty years of entrepreneurial experience in establishing sustainable businesses. Prior to founding Safi Sana, Aart co-founded a bakery in Amerstdam, which quickly progressed to a wholesale bakery and catering business. Soon it was time for a new challenge and Aart responded to the ask of leading Safi Sana, the world’s first complete circular industry; disposing of organic waste to provide sustainable energy and compost.

From an idea of the founding partners Aqua for All, Royal Haskoning DHV and the Dutch top tier bank Rabobank, Safi Sana was born. All three partners had different motivations for embarking on the Safi Sana journey, yet had one thing in common: a vision around the value of solid waste and wastewater. All three of them held their own pieces of the complex puzzle of creating value out of waste and shared the realization that they needed to join forces to maximize their mutual impact. Aart had the ambition and drive to enable the group to set up a showcase factory in Accra, Ghana. Commercial operations began at the factory in September 2016 and proof of concept was established in 2018/19 with current plans for global scale-up. For his vision and leadership, Aart was awarded the Sarphati Sanitation Award in 2015 for the most promising sanitation business case by a young entrepreneur and the Doing Business in Africa Award in 2017.