Spin-out com­pany aim­ing to replace harm­ful plastic microbeads receives £1.3M investment

Natur­beads, a com­pany set up by CSCT research­ers that aims to replace plastic microbeads with sus­tain­able altern­at­ives, is set to scale up its work after receiv­ing £1.3M (€1.5M) in a recent fund­ing round.

The invest­ment from Itali­an Ven­ture Cap­it­al fund Pro­gress Tech Trans­fer, Eos Advis­ory and Proion­ic GmbH will allow Natur­beads to grow its work from pilot to demo plant scale and to expand the range of applic­a­tions of its technology.

Natur­beads has developed a range of innov­at­ive and renew­able bio­de­grad­able cel­lu­lose-based products that can be used in cos­met­ics, paints, coat­ings, addit­ives for the oil and gas industry pack­aging, and composites.

Fol­low­ing research car­ried out at the CSCT, the com­pany was foun­ded by Pro­fess­or Dav­ide Mat­tia, the late Pro­fess­or Janet Scott, formerly the CSCT’s Train­ing Dir­ect­or, and CEO Dr Gio­vanna Laudisio.

Pro­fess­or Dav­ide Mat­tia said: ​“We are delighted to have received this invest­ment, which will allow us to accel­er­ate our work in provid­ing a sus­tain­able altern­at­ive to per­sist­ent micro­plastic beads. An estim­ated 30,000 tonnes end up in the world’s oceans each year, show­ing the clear need for tech­no­lo­gies such as ours to be adop­ted quickly.”

Dr Gio­vanna Laudisio added: ​“Rais­ing funds for a hard tech start-up like Natur­beads is chal­len­ging but we are pleased that with this invest­ment we are bring­ing on board two insti­tu­tion­al investors like EOS and Pro­gress Tech Trans­fer and a com­pany like Proion­ic. I am con­fid­ent that with their sup­port we will be able to accel­er­ate the com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion of our tech­no­logy and pre­vent hun­dreds of thou­sands of tons of micro­plastics from reach­ing the environment”.

Through a new col­lab­or­a­tion with its sub­si­di­ary Natur­beads Italia and Pro­fess­or Ant­o­nio Proto at the Uni­ver­sity of Salerno, the firm will explore the applic­a­tion of its tech­no­logy in the tyre industry to reduce its con­tri­bu­tion to micro­plastic pollution.

Alberto Calvo, part­ner of Pro­gress Tech Trans­fer®, said: ​“We imme­di­ately under­stood the enorm­ous poten­tial of the tech­no­logy developed by Natur­beads, which fits per­fectly into our mis­sion as early-stage, sus­tain­ab­il­ity-driv­en investors. The com­pany offers excit­ing pro­spects on glob­al mar­kets in a large num­ber of indus­tri­al sec­tors which are des­per­ately seek­ing prag­mat­ic solu­tions to address the elim­in­a­tion of micro­plastics from their products, and Natur­beads is already posi­tioned as a glob­al tech­no­logy lead­er in this arena.”

Andrew McNeill, Man­aging Part­ner of Eos Advis­ory, said: ​“Microbead plastic water pol­lu­tion is a sig­ni­fic­ant and hid­den envir­on­ment­al haz­ard that the world is only just start­ing to wake up to. As coun­tries and indus­tries restrict and ban their use, the mar­ket for bio­de­grad­able replace­ments is vast.

“What has really impressed Eos about Natur­beads is the people involved, the pro­tec­tions in place and the poten­tial of this tech­no­logy. This invest­ment will sup­port the scal­ing of Natur­beads pro­duc­tion and route to market.”

Bernhard Lud­wig, Exec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or of Proion­ic, said: ​“We are happy not only to sup­ply the neces­sary solvent for the pro­cess but to fur­ther con­trib­ute to the devel­op­ment of what we con­sider a game-chan­ging technology.”

Natur­beads has pre­vi­ously been fun­ded by the Uni­ver­sity of Bath Impact Accel­er­a­tion Account, Sky Ocean ven­tures, Innov­ate UK and the EPSRC.