WasteAnt is a Bremen-based AI company specializing in real-time waste-quality monitoring for Waste-to-Energy (WtE) and Waste-Management facilities. By combining advanced sensor technology with artificial intelligence, WasteAnt automatically analyzes the composition and quality of incoming waste streams, identifies impurities and hazardous materials, and provides actionable insights for operational optimization. The company’s solutions enable plant operators to enhance process efficiency, reduce operational risks, and increase the overall recovery value of waste — supporting safe, reliable, and data-driven plant operations.
What are the main areas of activity of the company?
WasteAnt primarily operates in the Waste-to-Energy (WtE) sector, providing AI-driven solutions that deliver real-time insights into the quality and composition of incoming waste streams. Our technology helps plant operators optimize fuel quality, detect impurities, and stabilize combustion processes by, among other things, providing incineration forecasts, improving both efficiency and compliance.
Beyond WtE, our solution has potential applications in other bulk-material processing industries, including biomass facilities, wood processing plants, and shredding operations. Any sector that handles heterogeneous materials and requires real-time quality monitoring can benefit from WasteAnt’s AI-based analytics and predictive insights. This versatility enables operators across multiple industries to enhance process control, reduce operational risks, and maximize resource recovery.
What’s the news about new products/services?
In 2025 and 2026, WasteAnt is focused on further enhancing the precision and robustness of its existing AI features. Our goal is to continuously improve detection accuracy, reduce standard deviation in quality measurements, and deliver even more reliable real-time insights to plant operators. In addition, we are expanding our product roadmap with two major developments:
- Crane automation support – leveraging our waste-homogeneity analysis to enable semi-automated or fully automated crane operations for more consistent bunker management.
- Integration with fire combustion control systems – developing interfaces that connect our calorific-value and emission forecasts directly to the plant’s firing control systems, helping operators stabilize combustion and improve energy efficiency.
These innovations will significantly increase the level of automation throughout the waste-handling and incineration process and further strengthen operational safety, efficiency, and predictability.
What are the ranges of products/services?
WasteAnt offers a comprehensive portfolio of AI-driven solutions covering the entire workflow from waste delivery to incineration. Our range includes:
- Material acceptance control with impurity detection, material characterization, waste-code (AVV) validation, temperature monitoring, and complete documentation.
- Conveyor-belt monitoring, providing real-time impurity detection with emergency-stop capabilities
- Bunker management optimization, including waste-homogeneity analysis and data-based mixing recommendations to ensure consistent fuel quality.
- Incineration forecasting services that predict calorific value and emission behavior, enabling stable, efficient, and environmentally compliant operation.
All modules are designed to be modular, scalable, and easily integrable into existing plant operations — offering operators a flexible, end-to-end digitalization pathway.
What is the state of the market where you are currently active?
The European Waste-Management and Waste-to-Energy sector is currently undergoing significant digital transformation. Stricter environmental regulations, increasing efficiency requirements, and the accelerating shift toward circular-economy principles are pushing operators to modernize legacy processes. Facilities are increasingly seeking real-time data, automation, and AI-driven tools to improve waste quality, increase plant reliability, and reduce compliance risks.
At the same time, the market remains fragmented, with a broad range of technological maturity levels across regions. This creates strong demand for scalable, easy-to-implement solutions such as WasteAnt’s. Overall, the EU market is growing, more receptive than ever to digital innovation, and highly supportive of advanced waste-quality monitoring and process-optimization technologies.
What can you tell us about market trends?
We observe several strong trends shaping the European waste-management landscape:
- Stricter regulatory requirements for emissions, quality assurance, and operational documentation.
- A continued push toward circular economy goals, increasing pressure on facilities to optimize residual waste handling.
- Rising volumes of municipal and industrial waste, leading to higher expectations regarding efficiency and safety.
- Growing need for data transparency and automation, as many plants still rely on manual inspection and experience-based decision-making.
These developments underline the importance of AI-supported solutions that ensure consistent waste quality, optimize energy recovery, and stabilize WtE processes. WasteAnt is well positioned to support this transition by enabling operators to make informed, data-driven decisions across the entire handling and incineration process.
What are the most innovative products/services marketed?
At WasteAnt, innovation is at the core of all our products and services. Our solutions are designed to bring transparency, predictability, and data-driven decision-making to one of the most complex and previously opaque processes in Waste-to-Energy operations: waste quality.
Currently, our most widely adopted solutions are AI-based impurity detection and combustion prediction. Impurity detection enables operators to identify and quantify unwanted materials in real time, reducing operational disruptions, safety risks, and downstream damage. Our combustion prediction models support more stable calorific values and improved plant efficiency by forecasting how waste composition will behave in the furnace before it is fed into the process.
Beyond commercial deployments, innovation at WasteAnt is strongly driven by research. We have already successfully completed three research projects and are actively working on additional ones, continuously transferring scientific findings into scalable, market-ready solutions.
By continuously expanding our dataset across different waste streams and plant configurations, we improve the accuracy, robustness, and predictive power of our models. Supported by a multidisciplinary team and several patents currently in process, WasteAnt delivers innovative products and services that turn complex waste streams into actionable insights — enhancing efficiency, energy recovery, and operational safety across the industry.
What estimations do you have for the end of 2025?
As we approach the end of 2025, WasteAnt is closing the year with a very solid position. Importantly, we have retained all existing customers, with every partnership renewed or extended. This continuity underscores the trust in our technology and the tangible value our solutions deliver in daily operations.
Throughout 2025, we have continued to strengthen both our technological capabilities and our organizational setup. Our team has grown steadily, with several new colleagues joining recently and additional team members starting in January and February. This ensures that we enter 2026 well prepared, both in terms of expertise and capacity.
Overall, we conclude 2025 with a stable customer base, proven solutions in productive use, and a growing, highly motivated team. This provides a strong foundation for accelerating our international expansion and scaling our impact across Europe in 2026.
