Kentucky-based smart waste and recycling software company Rubicon Technologies has acquired German routing software firm Civix to improve its products for municipal fleets.

Rubicon provides smart waste and recycling technology for businesses and governments worldwide. Civix is a routing software company based out of Freiburg, Germany. The acquisition expands and enhances the routing capabilities of Rubicon’s flagship software products for municipal and private fleets – Rubicon SmartCity and Rubicon Pro – while helping drive Rubicon’s growth into international markets.

Founded in 1999, Civix is the developer of the FleetRoute route optimisation and strategic planning software and associated technologies for data collection, in-cab navigation, dispatching, tracking, performance monitoring and messaging. FleetRoute’s geographic information system (GIS) and cloud-based route optimisation software is used to solve complex high-density routing problems through network algorithms developed for the municipal services, utility and street surveying industries.

With customers in North America, Europe and the Middle East, FleetRoute’s book of business includes local governments, councils and municipalities; private companies and corporations; public utilities; and federal and regional government agencies. In addition to Civix’s suite of route optimisation services, it also provides operational consulting services.

As part of the acquisition, the president of Civix, Paul Patterson, and his team have joined Rubicon.

“On behalf of our team, we are thrilled to have joined the Rubicon family to do our part in accelerating the company’s mission to end waste,” said Patterson. “Rubicon has partnered with FleetRoute for several years, and now with this acquisition we will be able to directly integrate our best-of-breed technologies and leverage the synergies between them to bring our customers to new levels of efficiency and performance.”

Rubicon SmartCity is a proprietary, cloud-based technology suite that helps city governments run faster, smarter and more effective waste, recycling and heavy-duty municipal fleet operations. It helps city governments ensure every resident’s trash and recycling is collected on their scheduled day, meaning no missed pickups. It also documents litter, bulky waste and illegal dumping with photos, thus ensuring these piles are cleaned up in a timely manner.

The technology reduces recycling contamination, so cities can sell their recyclable commodities for as much money as possible, and it reduces the cost of collection by ensuring trucks are taking the most efficient path to collect waste and recycling. Finally, it equips these vehicles, which go up and down every street in every city at least once a week, with capabilities to look for critical infrastructure and quality of life issues that can plague communities, helping city partners deliver better public services across all zip codes.

Rubicon Pro, a complementary product, helps private waste and recycling haulers deliver customer service to commercial and residential customers through a similar feature set.

“This acquisition will help Rubicon provide current and future public and private sector customers with an expanded level of service and will enhance our ability to deliver on the promise of creating more efficient, effective and sustainable waste and recycling services for communities,” said Michael Allegretti, chief strategy officer at Rubicon. “The addition of Paul and his experienced team to Rubicon brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to our business as we expand to more and more fleets across North America and abroad.”

Rubicon is a Lexington, Kentucky-based software platform that provides smart waste and recycling technology for businesses and governments worldwide.