Our Story

This is the journey of the pioneers behind Lytefire.

A caring engineer

One day, the retired engineer 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. The solution 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, 3) easy to use and maintain by the users. He created many prototypes to prove his concept: Phaeton, Vesta, Apollo, Helios. Many years later his design evolved into SOL and then Lytefire models.

An adventure of our time

Young journalist Mike Sacco took interest in the prototypes developed in Fraser’s backyard. With Lorin, Fraser’s grand-son, and with long-time friend Eerik Wissenz, they decided to build one for cacao farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico. The test was successful and it inspired Mike to start ChocoSol Traders in Toronto. 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. She was also a writer and volunteering a lot. Well aware of the daily difficulties faced by lots of populations on this planet, she was willing to help and support actions with a 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 deforestation. Progressively, she joined Eerik and Lorin in their effort to spread the "solar fire".

Change

At that time, Lorin and Eerik’s mindset was to pass on the design to NGO’s for them to integrate it to their livelihood programs. Eerik visited the giant solar oven in Font-Romeu as well as Terre & Humanisme, in France. Lorin was living between Canada and Africa, installing solar cookers on a volunteer base. Eva initiated a small non-profit, Association du Feu Solaire and started to organize workshops. But the reality of global warming became more clear and waiting for subsidies wasn’t their cup of tea. How could this great design spread better then?

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 plans open source and free on-line.

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 in Maine, US. Also convinced by the necessity of spreading this powerful solar tech, Urs started a project in Nepal for a school. He met Eerik in Gujarat, India, when Eerik was working on bigger solar 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 Gujarat, India. Later on, like Will, Arnaud would leave his job to join the team as CTO.

Impact entrepreneurs

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, sales and designs. Lorin and Will traveled the world implementing Lytefire wiht NGOs and bringing in additional features. Eva was responsible for communications, partnerships, finances, sales and administration. Eerik and Arnaud developed a software for optical and thermal calculations and worked on different applications. At the time, very few people saw what Eerik meant by talking about a “direct solar economy” and his approach was quite pioneering.

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 which they did for a while after the success of a first crowdfunding campaign.

Important field validation

Nevertheless, based on the first results, two pre-seed investors joined, Finnpartnership and Finnvera supported us. After a phase of R&D, the friends started a fruitful cooperation in Kenya with World Vision Finland in 2016. 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 iNGOs under the GoSol banner. Prestigious sponsors and foundations also started to support the effort to train more people and install more solar profitable activities.

2021: A key transition

The early years have been tough for the founders. The financial stress was huge as well as the stress of field projects logistics. Nobody was counting hours, in East and West Africa as in Finland the dedication was absolute. All this was 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, 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 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 Muriel Fuhrer and Susanne Müller joining the board at a crucial time.

In 2021, Joan Arwa, who’s also a trainer, started her solar bakery in Kisumu. The year after our team organized a crowdfunding campaign to directly support her efforts to grow. Since then she got herself a bigger kitchen and is now using 2 Lytefire to power her solar bakery. And in 2025 she was awarded with the Prix Afrique Excellence.

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 Normandy sky! Arnaud then met local industrialists and thanks to their expertise, the Lytefire Deluxe industrial model on a trailer meeting European standards was born and will need more iterations. 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, his company is growing and he shares his new ideas through training, a book and open days.

And now?

The team wants to spread Lytefire and we have created many entry points to Lytefire for many different users and budgets. We have created new training (baking activity training and Tech ToT), opened to commercial licensees, we are encouraging artisans projects and we are still working with the humanitarian sector. Step by step, we stay coherent and we keep going. We hope to encourage people’s freedom and empowerment everywhere to create more sustainability and social justice.

Since 2022, the company is run by Eva, Urs and the board’s members (team).
We’d like to express our gratitude to the amazing people who have been part of our time over the years, including 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, investors, licensees, partners, entrepreneurs, artisans, builders and associations who believe in this tech and who are making all this possible with us every day.