Marc and Philippe Haffner launched Soten engineering firm in 1993. From the beginning, the company focused in industrial energy projects, mainly biomass to energy. Since the late 90s, Soten designed, managed and built numerous biomass cogeneration plants in France and neighbouring countries, including gasification.

From 2010, Soten began begun to look at new biomass gasification methods which quickly lead Marc and Philippe Haffner towards hydrogen as a promising outlet for biomass.

In 2015, the design of HYNOCA process was very advanced. The ten first patent families were filed. Marc and Philippe Haffner then proceeded to their first fundraising. It is in this context, they created Haffner Energy, 100% parent company of Soten, in order to have a company dedicated to HYNOCA development, and to the execution of EPC biomass to energy projects.

Two subsequent fundraising enabled the company to considerably strengthen its equity and finance the commercial and industrial deployment of HYNOCA.