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Human death specialists
30th of October 2024 Article by Christian Bouzols
Christian Bouzols from France on a company that specialises in dealing with human deaths.
There’s hardly any area of human activity in which cleaning is not involved. This includes some difficult work. Groupe NAD, created in Alsace in 2017, specialises in cleaning work following the death of people. The company gets called to deal with all sorts of situations, some of which are post-mortem interventions (cleaning-up following the late discoveries of dead bodies), deployment after suicides and crime scene restoration work. It’s an industrial niche in which very few companies are to be found in France.
NAD now covers the whole of the country. Its founder Julien Martel needed three years of research and development work to create his enterprise. Its mission: the total elimination of all the bodily fluids of the deceased and the eradication of all the viruses and bacteria that have developed around the body. The company now employs six people and is called to some 100 to 200 death scenes a year, usually responding to private requests. Less frequently it is called in by courts of law to clean up death scenes that have been sealed off for the duration of the inquest. It’s an activity which is not much talked about in France.
While the cleaning up of crime and death scenes is an established and regulated activity in some countries, this is not the case in France. And this is why Julien Martel decided to get involved. “I was working for a firm of funeral services and realised that there were no specialised firms in France that could handle the work of cleaning-up in death situations. That kind of work was done by general cleaning companies carrying out disinfestation and industrial cleaning work. I then realised there could be an opening for a specialist contractor.”
The problem was that cleaning up after death requires skills and knowledge for which no training existed in France. “So I had to start by doing my own experiments in my own garage, using pig’s blood and pig’s flesh,” recalls Julien Martel. He then launched into the study of chemistry and microbiology “in order to understand the behaviour of bacteria and the interactions between chemical products”. Studying online, Martel also obtained certifications from US institutions. However he insists, “what really matters in this trade, you’ll need to learn in the field.”
Funding challenge
Another hurdle to overcome was the matter of funding, which was most difficult to obtain. “I started with €10 in my pockets. The banks just refused to back my project. The only institution prepared to invest in me was the ADIE (Association pour le droit à l’Initiative Economique) which lent me €10,000 for my start-up equipment.”
Reinvesting every euro of profit, Martel managed to buy everything required for his business, namely three lorries and €75,000 worth of equipment and materials. It also enabled him to hire his first employees. Recruitment isn’t easy. This type of activity can disturb some people and therefore requires that candidates submit to a psychological test before being hired.
Martel says the job is not for the faint-hearted and people need to keep a cool head. So his workers never come alone, but always in pairs, to crime and death scenes. It’s therefore quite an unusual job, both technically and emotionally, but the company is doing well and continuing to grow.
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