Our Story

This is the journey of the pioneers behind Lytefire.

A caring engineer

Long time ago, Fraser Symington (1920-2014) decided to work on an energy solution adapted to vulnerable populations who were using wood, charcoal, tires or trash to get heat. He gave himself 3 major constraints for this solar thermal innovation. It would have to be: 1) as powerful as an open fire (it would later be called a “solar fire”), 2) built with materials available locally and easy to maintain, 3) easy to use and maintain by the users. He created many prototypes to prove his concept: Phaeton, Vesta, Apollo, Helios, that many years later evolved into SOL and then Lytefire models, all of them being much more powerful than any individual solar cooker and easier to maintain than any existing community cooking systems.

An adventure of our time

One day, Fraser’s grand-son, Lorin Symington decided to build one solar concentrator for cacao farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico, along with a long-time friend Eerik Wissenz. Soon after this successful experience, ChocoSol Traders was created by Mike Sacco back in Canada. Eerik was passionate about maths, philosophy and social justice. He started to see in the solar concentrator a real solution that was worth spreading further to the most vulnerable. For Lorin and Eerik, this adventurous trip in Mexico became the first of many to support ecology and social justice.

Willing to help

In 2008, they met with Eva Cantavenera in Cuba. She had a corporate background in tourism, publishing and art in Paris. Well aware of the daily difficulties faced by the majority of people on this planet, she was willing to help and support actions with positive impact. It was obvious to her that this solar concentrator was one piece of the puzzle to reduce poverty, empower women, train the youth and reduce the side effects of global warming caused by fossil fuels. Progressively, she joined Eerik and Lorin in their effort to spread the "solar fire".

A life project?

At that time, Lorin and Eerik’s mindset was to pass on the design for NGO’s to integrate it to livelihood programs. Eerik visited the giant solar oven in Font-Romeu, France, while Lorin was living between Canada and Africa, installing solar cookers. Eva initiated a small non-profit, Association du Feu Solaire, as well as the very first DIY guide to the system. But all these actions were too slow and the stress of global warming on the population in the Global South became more real each year to them. Waiting for subsidies wasn’t their cup of tea, so they started to realize progressively that maybe they would have to create something different because if not them, then who else would bring this great innovation to those who need it most?

Six friends and one passion

Around 2010, Eerik and Eva met with Will Cleaver . Will is from the UK, passionate climber, he was at that time working on oil platforms security and contributing to Open Source Ecology. Lots of discussions were on-going about simply putting the plans open source and free on-line. Based on their experiences of the open source movement, they decided that many ideas were good but limited as only a tiny percentage of the population concerned would actually build solar concentrators when potentially millions need to replace charcoal and wood with a cleaner solution.

At that time, they were joined by a Swiss organic farmer and ecologist, Urs Riggenbach. At a very young age, Urs went to live and study in India and Maine, US. Also convinced by the necessity of spreading this powerful solar tech, Urs was willing to start a project in Nepal for a school. He met Eerik in Gujarat, India, when Eerik was working on bigger systems. Later on, after successful tests in India, Urs welcomed the small team to build a solar concentrator Helios in Switzerland to test steam production with success.

French thermal-optical engineer Arnaud Crétot was traveling the world with a friend after their graduation. He also met with Erik in India. Later on, like Will, Arnaud would leave his job to join the team as CTO.

Impact entrepreneurs

Lots of discussions led to a new approach. In order to slow down global warming and deforestation quickly, it was clear to the group of friends that people need a decentralized source of clean energy. If concentrating the solar rays wasn’t a new idea at all of course, all the innovations on the applications they were developing could make a real difference if people could make a productive use of this clean energy. At the time, very few people saw what Eerik meant by talking about “direct solar economy” and his approach was quite pioneering. To Eerik and Eva becoming impact entrepreneurs seemed to fit with their adventurous mindset. Eerik being half Finn, they moved from France to Finland to create Solar Fire Concentration Oy as a social impact company in 2012, quickly joined by Urs, Will, Lorin and then Arnaud in 2014. Eerik was responsible for strategy, patents and partnerships. Urs took care of all the IT and designs. Lorin and Will traveled the world implementing Lytefire and bringing in additional features. Eva was responsible for communications, partnerships, finances and administration. Eerik and Arnaud developed software for optical and thermal calculations and worked on different applications.

2015: turning point

The key challenge was to bring this simple and powerful solar solution requiring no high-tech while keeping the humanitarian approach strong. In a world obsessed by profitability, speed, high-tech and growth, this approach was a real challenge. The first project was to start a solar bakery in Haïti and show the world that it was possible to make money with the solar fire. Unfortunately, the entrepreneur chosen couldn’t make it happen as Haïti is for sure a very tough place to start. The six friends also wanted to release their very first collective guide for free which they did for a while after the success of the first crowdfunding campaign.

Important field validation

Nevertheless, based on the first results, two pre-seed investors joined, Finnpartnership and Finnvera supported the small company and the group started a fruitful cooperation in Kenya with World Vision Finland. The first projects to equip local Community Based Organizations with solar ovens went very well with good results in terms of bread production at a village level, especially with the first professional baker involved, David Chepkwone. This led to numerous cooperation with iNGO’s under the GoSol banner. Prestigious sponsors and foundations also started to support the effort.

2021: A key transition

The early years have been tough for the founders. Very. The financial stress has been huge, the stress of field projects logistics as well, nobody was counting hours, in East and West Africa as in Finland the dedication was absolute. All this was for sure not sustainable long term and some started to experience burnout as well as eco-anxiety. Some were discouraged and started to loose hope. Ultimately, divergence in the way to achieve growth led to a long and painful restructuring of the governance and operations. The group had to transition from a cool promising humanitarian exploratory project to a steady impact company, steady and truly able to spread their innovation with proper manufactured products.

Impact and social entrepreneurs

In 2022 finally better financial results came from sales. This encouraged Eva and Urs in their intuition of focusing more and more on the user’s experience, reinforcing local productions with creative licenses projects, and supporting more directly pioneers while continuing humanitarian projects with Kenyan based team members. The two co-pilots structured the operations, streamlined some processes and started new working habits. They supported the development of more comprehensive educational and construction material with the key contribution of Samuel Rodrigues. Gender equality has also been finally reached in the company’s governance, and later on in the team, thanks to Susanne Müller joining the board at a crucial time, and Muriel Fuhrer joining the team.

On top of the work with NGO’s, it is a bliss to see more and more succesful small baking and roasting solar artisan and you can discover some here. In 2021, Joan Arwa, who’s also a trainer, started her solar bakery in Kenya with a Lytefire Oven for a tiny production. The year after the team organized a crowdfunding campaign to directly support her efforts to grow, as well as the efforts of other local bakers. Since then she got herself a bigger kitchen and is now using 2 Lytefire to power her solar bakery.

During the years 2022-2023, Lytefire surprisingly got a huge interest from pioneers and media’s from France thanks to the NeoLoco solar bakery founded by Arnaud. In 2019, Arnaud wanted to better understand the performance of the Lytefire in a non-African context. Eerik suggested lending him a Lytefire oven built in Switzerland by Lorin, Will and Urs. Arnaud started using it for his baking and roasting business in Normandy. He was quickly impressed by the performance of his Lytefire under the Norman sky! Arnaud then met local industrialists and thanks to their expertise, the Lytefire Deluxe industrial model on a trailer meeting European standards was born. Arnaud became the first solar artisan in Europe, making a living with NeoLoco and welcoming many people into his home to discover a new way of transforming food using concentrated solar energy. Perfect example of a direct solar economy as designed by Eerik, his company is growing and he shares his new ideas through training, a book and open days.

And now?

We want to spread Lytefire and we have created many entry points to Lytefire for many different users and budgets. We have opened to commercial licensees, artisans licensees, we are encouraging artisans projects and we are still working with the humanitarian sector. We hope to encourage people’s freedom and empowerment everywhere to create more sustainability and social justice.

We’d like to express an immense gratitude to the entire amazing Lytefire team, and also to Eerik, Lorin and Arnaud. Government institutions, sponsors, consultants and interns have also contributed to our effort all the way. We are grateful to all the friends, the family members, the shareholders, licensees, partners, entrepreneurs, builders and associations who believe in this tech and who are making all this possible with us every day.