We want food waste to stop being waste. And we want you to be able to prove it.
We build commercial food-waste machines in Malaysia and sell them to hotels, factories, schools, hospitals, malls and councils. The waste is treated in the building that made it. Our composters produce compost; our OUTFLOW digesters produce liquid effluent. The right system can reduce dedicated food-waste collections at the source.
Every bank they went to said no.
Chelsea Chee is our founder, a woman entrepreneur in waste. Her vision is a greener earth, and MAEKO is how she contributes to it. The company started in 2011; the first award came in 2015.
“When we started out, we were totally by ourselves, as all the banks and investors that we went to turned us down. They said that we were too ambitious and that such an initiative would never take off in Malaysia.”
Chelsea Chee · Malaysia SME, 16–29 May 2015
Chelsea and her business partner, Mae Ooi, saw an opportunity to make food-waste treatment part of everyday operations.
“We discussed getting into food waste management because at that time no one was talking about it. Everyone was focused on collecting plastic or paper while this area was virtually unknown.”
Chelsea Chee · The Pillars, September 2015
A CW machine takes fish and chicken bones, prawn and oyster shells. The live culture that does the work is called Speedozyme. It is formulated for the oil in Asian cooking.
Ask her what the company is for and she answers plainly.
“Any employee who comes in is told why we exist and why they work at Maeko. It is our vision to help preserve Mother Earth. We don’t want our children to live in landfills. Our staff carry that passion with them and they are proud to be here.”
Chelsea Chee · The Pillars, September 2015
Awarded to Chelsea Chee — GCIP 2016, Best Women Led. The whole cabinet is here →
The checkable facts.
Everything a procurement team asks for before it will open a file.
What we say we are for.
Where MAEKO is heading. These describe what the company is working towards, not what every machine delivers today.
Vision
To lead a fully circular, zero-food-waste future by integrating prevention, composting, biodigesters and waste-to-energy across the food chain. Every outcome is made visible and verifiable through IoT-enabled carbon tracking and ESG-ready reporting.
Mission
To equip businesses, communities and households with smart, scalable food-waste technologies and a unified data platform that automates resource recovery and energy generation. It delivers real-time, auditable carbon insights and ESG reporting aligned to global standards.
“If we hold hands, things will be fine.”
Chelsea Chee · The Pillars, September 2015
Recognised every year from 2015 to 2025, two hundred sites, and a shelf of press cuttings.
The awards → The press →A company you can check. A kitchen we have not seen.
You can find our company details and how we work on this page, and our recognition history here. Tell us what your kitchen throws out and how it is collected. If you have a week of weights, send those too; we will help you work out the next step.