Bon Plein
Building industrial projects that return value where it is created — and finding those who can carry them.
bon plein n.m. — marine. The point of sail where a boat sails as close to the wind as it can while keeping its sails full — about 70° off the true wind. You bear away slightly from close-hauled: you give up angle, you gain speed.
Julien Marboeuf
Bon Plein Capital — agribusiness & cocoa · Lyon · Abidjan
02 / 12 — the manifesto
Agricultural value chains are out of balance.
Those who produce capture the least. Those who process and distribute capture the rest.
I work with the companies set on correcting that — the ones for which it is the purpose, not the positioning.
I bring industrial and technological experience: I know the plant floor, and I can build the tool.
My trade is structuring.
Not an investor: a project builder — his own projects and his clients'. What is committed is time, experience and structuring work, not capital. Then comes the search for those who can carry them: partners who bring knowledge and engineering capability first, capital second. A cheque can be found. Someone who knows how to build, far less easily.
There is always a project on the table.
03 / 12 — the track record
Twenty years of agribusiness, 35 countries.
- 2004–2005DuPont de Nemours — Paris
Registration officer, herbicides, France. - 2005–2015Arysta LifeScience / UPL — Ghana, Maroc, France
MENA marketing and development, EAME procurement across 35 countries, Japanese partnerships. €11.1M saved on €190M of purchasing. - 2015–2016RMG — Abidjan & Bamako
Sales and marketing director Côte d'Ivoire, deputy managing director Mali. - 2016–2024ECOM Trading — Abidjan, Accra, Lagos, Dubaï, Shanghai
Country head. €150M revenue, 170 staff, 6 branches, 2 factories, 3 companies founded. - since 2024Bon Plein Capital — Lyon & Abidjan
Project structuring, tool building, partner sourcing. Company incorporated in 2025. - from Sept. 2026NESKAO — Abidjan
Deputy chief executive officer. Cocoa processing, Côte d'Ivoire.
Polytech Angers · INSEAD · Former vice-president, Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Côte d'Ivoire · Former board member, ECOM West Africa · Former executive committee member, GEPEX
04 / 12 — the turn
Ten years in agrochemicals.Everyone is selling AI to industry.Being a polymath isn't a bonus, it's the job.
Ten years running companies.Almost no one selling it has ever run the plant.Leadership is knowing which one applies.
August 2025my first line with Claude Code.Teams to lead, then agents to design.
Twenty years of operations didn't teach me to code.
They taught me what to code.
05 / 12 — the instrument — Jarvis
55,311 documentsone single memory · 100 % local
The problem. Running alone what used to take a hundred and seventy people. Information sits scattered across six mailboxes, recorded meetings, handwritten notebooks and years of documents — and it is nowhere to be found at the moment of decision.
What it solves. One single memory of 55,311 documents, queried in plain language, answering with its sources: an email, a meeting note, a notebook page.
What it changes. Eighteen tasks run with nobody watching, including the 7:15 morning brief. Everything stays on one machine — nothing goes to the cloud.
06 / 12 — the plant — P&L generator
458 accountsevery Monday 08:00 · zero human input
The problem. A processing plant that learns its P&L three weeks after month-end. Every month, three people to chase for three files, and a controller retyping figures instead of reading them.
What it solves. Every Monday at eight, the agent sends the three requests itself, collects the files, aligns the period, builds the P&L across 458 accounts and computes the cost per tonne.
What it changes. Budget variances reach the controller on Monday morning. Nobody opens the app.
07 / 12 — the desk — Commodities Compass
cooperative to vesselmarket platform live in production
The problem. In Ivorian cocoa, the data you need to negotiate is expensive, late, and held by the other side of the table. A local player sells without knowing what he is selling.
What it solves. A physical trading desk — cooperative to vessel — backed by its own market intelligence platform: volumes, duties, destinations, season by season.
What it changes. 23.6 million tonnes tracked across thirteen seasons, 201 exporters. The platform runs in production on watchai.tech; the server is administered in-house.
08 / 12 — the machine — AgroMicroTech
zero deviationon geometry, against the client's spreadsheet
The problem. A smallholder cannot afford one machine per crop. Without mechanisation he stays a raw-material producer, at the bottom of the chain, and there he stays.
What it solves. A single powered tool that works seven crops. Acquisition cost stops being a wall.
What it changes. The machine pays for itself by working the neighbours' plots too. The farmer becomes a contractor: he moves from producer to entrepreneur. Company registered in Abidjan, chaired since June 2026.
09 / 12 — the quote — La Fabrique
watchai.techlive in production · 6 professional users
The problem. A joinery manufacturer priced its quotes in a hand-built spreadsheet. Each file took hours and depended on the one person who knew how to run it.
What it solves. The architect's drawing and the specification go in. Extraction identifies the units, breaks them into panels, proposes a costing — and the PDF quote comes out in house style.
What it changes. Zero deviation on geometry against the original spreadsheet. Engine delivered in a week, from first document to working demo.
10 / 12 — the fleet
The fleet
Seven companies. What matters is not what I hold — it is what I do in them.
Cocoaian
Ivorian cocoa leaves as beans and returns as bars: the value added stays in Europe.
An integrated chain that processes locally and sells direct.
Premium Ivorian chocolate · 15 %
Origin(al)
Origin chocolate sells on the chocolatier's name, never the terroir's.
A bean-to-bar that names the terroir, the craft and the price paid.
Bean-to-bar, in creation · 30 %
WatchAI
Cocoa export statistics are public but unreadable, therefore unusable.
Volumes, duties and destinations, readable in one question. Live in production.
Cocoa market intelligence
TonAgentIA
An accounting firm cannot hand its files to AI hosted elsewhere.
Domain agents on the firm's own server, under its own name. Built, not yet launched.
AI agents for accounting firms · 100 %
Insaitia
Market research costs weeks and a budget SMEs don't have.
Panels and studies run in minutes.
Marketing & food research AI · 50 %
Chutt
An African company's reputation plays out in sources nobody tracks.
Continuous monitoring, one dashboard. The tool exists, the legal entity does not yet: it is carried by Bon Plein Capital.
Reputation monitoring · carried by Bon Plein Capital
Xocoa
Choosing a specialty chocolate takes a vocabulary nobody has.
A sommelier that turns taste into a recommendation.
Premium chocolate retail · holding
Neskao & N26
Two industrial companies with no credible online presence.
Identity, copy, deployment. Two brands, two registers, one author.
Sites designed and shipped
11 / 12 — who calls
Four situations, and I pick up
A — Casting off
Launch &
expansion
Your product works in Europe. It needs to work in Abidjan, Douala or Fort-de-France — local teams, local partners, local rules.
B — Wind heading
SME at the
ceiling
Revenue is up, margins are flat. You still approve every invoice, your ERP is an Excel file.
C — Heavy weather
Turnaround
The bank is nervous, stock is sitting in a port, key people are leaving. I stabilise, renegotiate, rebuild.
D — New heading
Putting AI
to work
Your teams have been testing chatbots for a year and nothing has reached production. You want a tool that runs on Monday morning, not another pilot.
12 / 12 — Port of call
Tell me what's stuck.
One line is enough. I answer myself, within forty-eight hours.
Open the conversationBuilding something that rebalances a chain?
- julien@bonplein.fr
- Paris
- +33 7 59 54 24 44
- Abidjan
- +225 07 89 91 91 36
- Registered office
- 60 rue François 1er, 75008 Paris
Bon Plein Capital · 60 rue François 1er, 75008 Paris · 988 667 960 R.C.S. Paris
Drive Change. Enable People. Increase Profit.
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