NovAmazone is an engineering consultancy specialising in environmental engineering
NovAmazone supports you in the design and delivery of sustainable development projects. We offer investors, companies and local authorities our expertise in project consulting and design. Depending on your expectations, we work in project owner’s assistance (AMO), project management (MOE) and/or operational project management. We support investors, companies, cooperatives, public bodies and local authorities with project owner’s assistance on their projects.
We can also step in on a one-off basis, at certain stages of the project cycle, in consulting, technical expertise and thematic training. We turn your idea into a sustainable, ethical reality, fully rooted in its territory, responsible and creating economic, social and environmental wealth. We help you clearly define your needs, design your project, verify its technical and commercial feasibility, study its impacts, and win the support of your target audiences:
Define the feasibility and profitability of your project
Plan the stages of its delivery
Conduct impact studies to prevent environmental risks
Communicate on environmental, economic and social impacts.
Monitor technical implementation
We provide optimised, tailored solutions for all your sustainable development projects, locally and internationally, in the sectors of land-use planning, agroecology and agri-food.
The founder’s vision
Agriculture with a positive impact, both for those who practise it and for the environment, thanks to agroecology driven by an innovative private sector. This is the conviction that led me to create NovAmazone in 2016, to support sustainable, profitable and resilient agricultural and agri-food projects.Brice Epailly, founder of NovAmazone
Read the full vision
Today’s and tomorrow’s agriculture is agriculture with a positive impact, both for the people who practise it and for the environment it is part of. My experience has convinced me that one of the keys to achieving this lies in an innovative private sector taking up the principles of agroecology. That conviction led me to found NovAmazone in 2016, to bring my expertise to the development of sustainable and profitable agricultural and agri-food projects. Today NovAmazone offers tailored support to investors, companies, public bodies and local authorities in their projects to create or transition towards sustainable, profitable and above all resilient systems of land-use planning, production or processing.
French Guiana is a land full of challenges for agriculture and agroforestry:
Forest preservation, French regulations not always suited to the territory’s geographical and economic particularities, farmers’ struggle against the forest encroaching on productive land… And what if, instead of fighting the forest and the humidity, we turned our particularities into an asset? That is the idea behind the genesis of the NovAmazone project: moving from a strategy of exploitation to a strategy of valorisation. By redefining the economic model of farm start-ups, we have the opportunity to put agriculture back at the crossroads of French Guiana’s economic and social development. Indeed, in a territory that is still 98% forested, the particularity is that the creation of arable land must come from converting forest areas. Defining new production routes that integrate the use of forest products thus allows us to see agriculture as a balancing sector through its cross-cutting links with the strategic sectors of forestry, agri-food, energy and construction. Setting up innovative Amazonian agroforestry systems that include high-value crops such as cocoa and palm fruit can strengthen local sectors, create major players, and generate economic wealth for our territory, thanks to innovative systems for valorising biodiversity that change our approach to nature and make them its protective shield.
In 2007
In 2007, when I graduated with distinction from my BTS in horticultural production, I did not yet know that agroecology would play a central role in my life as an entrepreneur. Yet many debates had enlivened our two years of agronomy classes between the defenders of conventional agriculture and the supporters of a return of French production systems to organic farming. Moreover, my main work placement, in soilless tomato and strawberry growing on a farm practising integrated biological control (IBC), reflected the beginnings of my commitment to this path. One thing is certain: it was after being trained in the dangers of using chemical plant protection products that I became aware of their harmfulness and vowed never to use them in my future projects. That same year, by joining the Institut National d’Horticulture et du Paysage in Angers, I was to spend 4 years consolidating my technical knowledge, developing my interest in environmental preservation and embracing the sustainable development approach. Through my work placements, I notably consolidated:
- my language and technical skills alongside Kevin HIPKINS, joining his company Royale Orchids, one of the most diverse orchid nurseries in New South Wales (Australia)
- my scientific culture with CIRAD in Montpellier, working on the genetic analysis of cocoa quality criteria
- my analytical and interpersonal skills with the DEAL of French Guiana, working on the communication of the Atlas of Landscapes of French Guiana. I completed my engineering degree by specialising in Project Management and Landscape Engineering, more particularly in operational project management.
In 2012
Born in French Guiana, I decided to return there in 2012 to put my skills at the service of a territory with many potentialities that are still underdeveloped. After a brief experience within a local cooperative, I seized the opportunity of several assignments on behalf of:
- the Centre de Formation Professionnelle et de Promotion Agricoles (CFPPA), as a landscaping trainer, where I supported the upskilling of a class of young apprentices, as well as the staff of several local authorities.
- the Agence de Services et de Paiement (ASP), as a project officer for agricultural settlement, then for the evaluation of land allocation operations conducted by the agency using European funding from the 2006-2013 programming period.
In 2016
After 3 intense years in the civil service, I was fine-tuning the setting up of a personal agroforestry farming project in the commune of Montsinéry-Tonnegrande. In 2016 the NovAmazone adventure began and gave rise, alongside the consulting activity, to an agroforestry production activity through a subsidiary, with a view to processing the produce. Aware that the solutions I wish to promote through NovAmazone’s activity are innovative compared with local practices, the agroforestry farm, named CulturA, also became a demonstration platform for our philosophy. Through this subsidiary, we wish to demonstrate the viability of a production system based on the cultivation of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) and palm fruits such as wassay (Euterpe oleracea), combined with other high-value species.
In 2018
Proud of the successes achieved on our farm, which are the fruit of years of exchanges and experimentation, in March 2018, in partnership with the Continuing Education Institute of the University of French Guiana, I had the honour of welcoming on site Mr Godfrey NZAMUJO, Doctor in electronics, microbiology and development economics and founder of the SONGHAÏ centre in Benin, who travelled for a series of lectures entitled “The SONGHAÏ farms: an agricultural model for French Guiana?” Our exchanges with a large audience and the advice he was able to give me reassured me that I was on the right path. Today, NovAmazone’s support enables other project leaders to benefit from the economic, environmental and societal advantages of rural and agricultural development guided by the principles of agroecology and agroforestry.
In 2020
As part of the first tranche of a programme of nearly €196,000 of investment for the development of our subsidiary CulturA, NovAmazone led the preparation of a financing application to Crédit Agricole Martinique-Guyane, which last October granted CulturA financing of €115,000.