Plastics not only leave behind the visible traces of global plastic pollution, but also contribute significantly to the climate crisis through their resource-intensive production from fossil raw materials. As part of a sustainable circular economy, traceless materials from Germany, has developed a holistically sustainable material to tackle the plastic crises. It produces a natural biomaterial as an alternative to plastic.
In a recent development, the bioeconomy startup traceless materials has raised €36.6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by private equity fund UB Forest Industry Green Growth Fund, complemented by SWEN CP’s Blue Ocean fund, and a local banking syndicate consisting of GLS Bank, Hamburg, and Hamburger Sparkasse. Also, existing investors, Planet A Ventures (which invested in Paleo and HIVED), High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), and b.value participated in the round.
Builds production plant in Germany
The funds will be used to expand its production capacity and implement its technology on an industrial scale for the first time. traceless is building a demonstration plant in Hamburg. With this production plant, the company will replace several thousand tons of conventional plastic annually and at the same time save a significant amount of CO2 emissions, fossil resources, water, and agricultural land.
In parallel with the technology scaleup, the company is developing pilot products made from traceless materials with its customers and partners.
“Through scaling our innovative technology, we prove that a climate-friendly, circular, resilient and regenerative industry is possible. With our novel biomaterial, we can make a significant contribution to solving plastic pollution.”, said Dr. Anne Lamp, CEO and co-founder of traceless. “We are convinced that UB FIGG and SWEN’s Blue Ocean fund are a great addition to our shareholders as they have relevant knowledge in our industry. The fact that both our investors and the banks fully support our mission was a decisive criterion for us.”
“traceless’ approach to use widely available agricultural side streams to replace fossil-based plastic and the financial opportunity their solution proposes convinced us both economically and ecologically”, said Sakari Saarela, Partner at UB FIGG. “The traceless team has achieved extremely strong results in terms of material performance, development times and commercialization of the new material. We are looking forward to accompanying Anne, Johanna and the team in the scale up of this innovative technology.”
“Financing capital-intensive start-ups is still unfamiliar to many investors and banks. This makes it a special challenge for industrial manufacturing start-ups like us that are developing the innovative technologies of tomorrow. We are very pleased that with UB FIGG, SWEN CP, Planet A, HTGF, b.value our local bank consortium we have found partners who share our vision and have recognised and understood the challenges of financing our hardware scale-up. With their support, we are going to reach our ambitious goals to make our contribution to solve global plastic pollution!”, said Johanna Baare, COO and co-founder of traceless.
“The Blue Ocean fund seeks to invest in startups bringing innovative solutions to address the 3 main threats to our ocean: overfishing, ocean pollution and climate change. As plastic pollution is one of the main pollutants threatening our ocean, we were seduced by traceless, a bio-based and biodegradable material that can replace plastics in products that easily end up in the environment, and hence in our ocean, such as single-use packaging as well as hidden plastics in adhesives and paper coatings. traceless is a compelling alternative to applications where reusable solutions are not sustainable and technical recycling is not feasible”, said Olivier Raybaud, Managing Director of SWEN Capital Partners.
Sustainable plastic alternative
Founded in 2020 by Dr. Anne Lamp and Johanna Baare in Hamburg. Its mission is to contribute to a regenerative, climate-friendly economy and a future free of plastic pollution. With their innovative technology, the company turns agricultural industry plant leftovers into natural biomaterials that are bio-based, home compostable, plastic-free and have a minimal ecological footprint.
The company produces traceless materials in the form of a granulate that can be further processed using standard technologies in the plastics and packaging industry. Thus, the material can be used in a wide range of end products – from rigid moulded parts and flexible films to paper coatings or adhesives.
The patent-pending technology is based on natural polymers, contains no potentially harmful chemicals, and has a minimal ecological footprint. Compared to plastic, 91% of CO2 emissions and 89% of fossil energy requirements are saved during production and disposal.
