Elea & Lili, a deep-tech startup emerging from Finland’s VTT Technical Research Centre, has secured €2.5 million in seed funding to bring its sustainable material innovation to market. The round was led by Lifeline Ventures, with participation from Ikorni Invest Oy Ab and Baltiska Handels Sverige AB, investors known for backing long-term industrial and sustainability-focused ventures.
This funding will support pilot production, regulatory approvals, industrial partnerships, and the company’s first commercial launches across the U.S. and Europe. Elea & Lili is focused on scaling production, advancing product validation, and expanding their team. It aims to establish a new global standard for absorbent technologies.
Rethinks everyday materials
Today’s absorbent materials market relies heavily on petroleum-based superabsorbent polymers (SAP) used in diapers, feminine hygiene products, incontinence products and agricultural soil additives.
These materials perform extremely well technically, but they are plastic-based and non-biodegradable, raising long-term environmental concerns.
With hundreds of billions of diapers used globally every year, the absorbent material inside them has a significant environmental footprint. At the same time, concern around plastic waste and microplastics is increasing across multiple industries.
Elea & Lili aim to address this by developing a cellulose-based superabsorbent material that could replace petroleum-based SAP in both hygiene products and agricultural water-retention applications. Its innovation, Cellulose Super Absorbent (CSA™), is derived from cellulose, making it biodegradable and free from fossil inputs. Importantly, it doesn’t compromise on performance. CSA™ can absorb liquid at levels comparable to traditional SAPs while integrating seamlessly into existing manufacturing processes.
This compatibility gives the company a major advantage. Manufacturers don’t need to overhaul production lines, lowering barriers to adoption and speeding up the shift toward more sustainable materials.
Founders with expertise
Elea & Lili was founded by Tatu Miettinen and Dr. Miika Nikinmaa. Tatu Miettinen has a commercial and strategic background and has spent his career building and scaling digital consumer services and partnerships. Before founding Elea & Lili, he held senior commercial roles in the media and technology industry, most recently at MTV Oy, one of the leading media companies in the Nordic region. At Elea & Lili, he focuses on strategy, partnerships, and building the commercial ecosystem around the technology.
Dr. Miika Nikinmaa holds a PhD from North Carolina State University (NCSU) and has worked in research and product development in both the United States and Finland. At heart, he is a materials scientist and researcher who most recently worked at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, leading national and EU-level projects.
Miika has developed novel next-generation cellulose-based materials for hygiene applications on an industrial scale, as well as bringing completely new concepts from laboratory to late pilot stage.
The company is a spin-out from VTT, built to commercialise cellulose-based superabsorbent technology. Together, the founders combine deep materials science expertise with experience in commercialisation and scaling.
Personal insight turned industrial vision
The origin of Elea & Lili is rooted in a personal moment. CEO Tatu Miettinen became aware of the environmental impact of diapers after the birth of his first child in 2017. What began as a personal concern evolved into a mission supported by over a decade of scientific research.
The company now holds a robust patent portfolio based on biomaterials research developed at VTT. Its team combines scientific expertise with industrial scaling capabilities, enabling it to move from lab innovation to real-world application.
Regarding the origin of this idea, CEO Tatu Miettinen told TFN, “The original motivation behind the company was both personal and market-driven. When my daughter Elea was born, I started thinking about how many diapers a single child uses every day and what materials are actually inside them. Looking deeper into the industry revealed a much bigger issue: the core absorbent material used in most hygiene products today is superabsorbent polymer (SAP), which is a petroleum-based plastic.”
“Globally, hundreds of billions of diapers are used every year, creating a major sustainability challenge. At the same time, similar absorbent materials are also used in agriculture for soil water retention. That led us to explore whether a cellulose-based alternative could replace petroleum-based absorbents in both hygiene products and agricultural applications,” he added.
Miika Nikinmaa, co-founder, said, ”I’ve dreamed of starting my own company since I was a child. When I heard Tatu’s passionate vision and recognised the enormous need for sustainable cellulose-based alternatives in the hygiene sector, it was a no-brainer — we had to make this happen! We threw ourselves into it, working intensely together, bouncing ideas back and forth, and from that energy and determination, Elea & Lili were born.”
What makes its technology different?
Elea & Lili’s CSA represents a new cellulose-based absorbent material platform designed to replace petroleum-based superabsorbent polymers. While cellulose is widely used in hygiene products today, traditional fibres cannot match the absorption performance of synthetic superabsorbent polymers. CSA transforms cellulose into a high-performance absorbent capable of storing large volumes of liquid while preserving cellulose’s environmental benefits.
The technology is designed to be compatible with existing hygiene product manufacturing, which is important for large-scale adoption. The same material platform can also be used in agriculture to improve soil water retention, helping crops withstand drought conditions while reducing reliance on petroleum-based absorbent polymers.
Absorbent polymers are used across multiple industries, and replacing petroleum-based SAP with a cellulose-based alternative could fundamentally change how absorbent materials are produced.
“Hygiene and agriculture are equally strategic entry points for us. In both markets, absorbent materials are mission-critical components – and today they are fossil-based. We are replacing them with a scalable biomaterial,” says Tatu Miettinen, CEO and Co-founder.
“In 2019, the birth of my daughter Elea was medically complex and involved time in neonatal intensive care. The experience profoundly reshaped our family’s perspective. At that moment, I decided: if she recovers, I will dedicate myself to building something meaningful and sustainable for the next generation,” says Miettinen. “We are not creating a niche eco-product. We are replacing a global material category,” says Miettinen.
“I have been waiting for a non-fossil alternative, and Finland’s top expertise in biomaterials makes it natural for it to emerge from here. Today, a good part of those 170 billion diapers remains in our soils forever, and we grow food in microplastics,” says Timo Ahopelto, Founding Partner of Lifeline Ventures.
