Dripl closes €4 million round to scale smart refill points
Dripl, a Brussels-based startup building smart water dispensers for workplaces, has raised €4 million to expand across Europe, increase manufacturing capacity and accelerate adoption of its refill-based alternative to bottled beverages. The company said the new capital will support a broader rollout beyond the Benelux, where it has already deployed its dispensers in more than 500 companies.
The round was led by Abacus Investments, with continued backing from existing supporters including Spadel, Faraday Venture Partners and the Meert Family. The funding will also be used to ramp up operations at Dripl’s production facility in Leuven, as the company prepares for larger volume orders and additional regional launches.
Making refilling “better than the alternatives”
Colin Deblonde, co-founder of Dripl, framed the company’s ambition as a behavioral shift rather than a niche sustainability play. “Real behaviour change only happens when the healthy and sustainable option is simply better than the alternatives on every level,” he said, adding that the new round is intended to help make “healthy refilling the norm worldwide.”
According to the company, its product is designed to replace a range of workplace beverage options—particularly bottled water and sugary soft drinks—by offering still water and flavored options with functional positioning (such as ginger-lime or raspberry-grapefruit) without added sugar. Dripl also emphasizes reduced emissions and waste compared with traditional single-use packaging.
Investors cite impact and packaging reduction
Wim Flo, CEO of Abacus Investments, said the investment aligns with the firm’s focus on impact-driven companies. He pointed to two core outcomes: healthier hydration through sugar-free drinks and a reduction in single-use packaging through a refill model. “We’re excited to support Dripl in the next chapter of their journey,” he said, describing the move as joining a broader “Refillution.”
The funding arrives amid continued investor interest in technology-led workplace hydration and sustainability infrastructure. In a comparable European transaction, Amsterdam-based Aquablu raised €7 million in 2025 to scale its own smart dispenser platform and expand internationally—an indicator that corporate buyers and investors continue to explore alternatives to bottled water in offices and public venues.
From spare Coca-Cola parts to a workplace scale-up
Dripl was founded in 2020, and the origin story is rooted in a familiar workplace pain point: vending machines stocked with single-use packaged drinks. The company says the idea emerged when co-founders Colin Deblonde and Lucas (the company has referenced the co-founder publicly as Lucas) questioned why flavored beverages remained tied to disposable packaging. As students at the time, they began prototyping in a garage using second-hand Coca-Cola machine components.
That early experimentation evolved into what Dripl now calls its smart “Refill Points,” positioned as a zero-waste alternative to bottled soft drinks and water in office settings. The hardware combines dispensing with a digital layer intended to simplify use and support scaling across multi-site employers.
500+ customers and 15 million packages avoided
The company reports more than 500 customers and lists organisations such as Moore, Cordeel, Visma and PostNL among its client base. Since launch, Dripl says it has helped avoid more than 15 million single-use packages—a figure it describes as roughly one disposable package avoided every second of the workday.
Dripl also claims it has reached profitability while growing, positioning itself as a hardware-and-consumables business rather than a pure software play. “Over the past few years, we’ve already achieved something special: building a profitable, fast-growing hardware and drinks scale-up that’s helping make healthy, sustainable hydration the norm,” Deblonde said.
What the new funding is expected to change
The company’s near-term priorities following the round are operational: increasing output at its Leuven facility, supporting deployments for larger enterprise customers, and entering additional European markets. Expansion beyond the Benelux is central to the plan, as Dripl aims to compete in a beverage landscape still dominated by large corporations and high-volume single-use distribution.
Longer term, the startup has set a headline goal of eliminating 1 billion single-use packages. While that target remains aspirational, the company is betting that the combination of convenience, product choice and corporate sustainability commitments can move refilling from a “nice-to-have” to a default workplace behavior.
“Large corporations continue to dominate the market and push single-use, sugary drinks at scale,” Deblonde said. “We’re here to fix that.”
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