Perth sustainable materials startup Uluu has raised $16 million in Series A, helping it develop a facility capable of turning seaweed into a natural plastic alternative at commercial scale.
The latest raise was led by Germany’s Burda Principal Investments, with contributions from Main Sequence, Novel Investments, Startmate, and impact investors and family offices, including Fairground and Trinity Ventures.
Main Sequence is a return investor, having led its 2022 $8 million funding round, which saw contributions from investors as diverse as supermodel Karlie Kloss and homegrown musical hero Kevin Parker, best known as Tame Impala.
Launched in 2021 by co-founders and co-CEOs Dr Julia Reisser and Michael Kingsbury, Uluu applies an advanced fermentation process to organic material.
Microbes feed on the seaweed in a process similar to brewing beer, and produce materials called polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs).
Uluu extracts and collects these PHAs, turning them into pellets usable by packaging and fabric manufacturers.
“Uluu can be used to replace most, if not all, plastics, including rigid products, films, foams, textiles, 3D filaments, rubber-like materials and more,” Reisser said.
“Our materials are durable yet biodegradable, and work in existing plastic manufacturing equipment.”
New products
Uluu has grown behind the scenes, with the startup expanding from 13 to 23 staff this year.
The business already operates a pilot facility capable of producing 100kg of these materials, supplying a plastic alternative to brands like Quiksilver and Papinelle.
Those launches – a wax scraper for surfboards, and luxury pyjama buttons, respectively – show what Uluu could do with limited production runs.
But the founders hope the new funding will help build a commercial facility capable of producing 10 tonnes of PHA materials annually, expanding the market for its product.
“We’ve been working behind the scenes to prototype our materials with cosmetics, fashion and automotive companies,” said Reisser.
“These agreements often involve joint development, staged trials and offtake, aligned with the staged increase in materials from our current test plant to the upcoming demonstration plant and beyond.”
Reisser is particularly interested in potential uses for PHAs in the textile industry, noting work alongside Deakin University to spin yarn from Uluu pellets.
Uluu materials are waterproof but biodegradable, offering “sustainable end-of-life options, including reuse, recycling, and composting,” she said.
“We believe the latter offers a more cost-effective end-of-life option for the return schemes many of the fashion brands are trialling at the moment.”
Novel Investments, which chipped in to the Series A round, has ties to the textile industry, Reisser added.
“We’re proud to have Novel Investments backing us, and excited to tap into their know-how to bring our pellets into an industrial textile mill and prove we’re ready to bring this product to market.”
Climate goals
Beyond simply replacing petrochemical products in the market, Uluu says its production process actively sequesters carbon – keeping it away from the atmosphere and preventing climate harm.
Seaweed absorbs massive quantities of carbon globally; by harvesting that seaweed for use in PHAs, Uluu says it can prevent that carbon from entering the atmosphere.
Once its operations are up to commercial scale, the startup claims it could sequester around 5kg of carbon dioxide equivalents for each kilogram of material produced.
By contrast, traditional plastics emit 3kg of carbon dioxide equivalents for each kilogram of usable material.
All told, Uluu believes the technology powering its seaweed-processing system could one day help reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by two gigatonnes each year.
It is not the only promising seaweed-based technology to emerge out of Australia in recent years, with businesses like Tasmania’s Sea Forest turning seaweed into cattle feed designed to lower farmyard emissions.
- This story first appeared on SmartCompany. You can read the original here.
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