Startups Developing Sustainable Bio Based Materials and a Marking Technology for Plastic Parts Each win CHF 40,000
04.09.2020
NaturLoop and matriq Teams win Venture Kick’s second stage of financial and entrepreneurial support. Their projects offer an alternative to wood-based composites and enable brands and industrials to track their plastic parts.
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2.jpg) NaturLoop's Co-founders Michail Kyriazopoulos and Daniel Dinizo
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2.jpg) matriq team
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NaturLoop: Sustainable and affordable bio-based materials
The wood-based composite industry is growing tremendously and facing severe pricing pressure for its raw material. Many countries are forced to import high volumes of wood products due to a lack of natural resources and environmental policies. NaturLoop’s co-founders Michail Kyriazopoulos, inventor and responsible for product and technology development, and Daniel Dinizo, in charge of business operations, both studied wood technology at BFH. They created NaturLoop, a cleantech company that develops technology to upcycle local agricultural waste into affordable, highly functional and sustainable products for the furniture and construction industry. Their first product, Cocoboard™, is an all-natural fiberboard made of coconut husk and bio-based adhesive, designed in Switzerland and manufactured in the Philippines. Their mission is to implement a circular economy approach while restricting deforestation and boosting local production of sustainable products. The Venture Kick funds will support customer discovery, industrial scale trials and team expansion.
matriq: a novel in-line marking technology for plastic parts
Nowadays, products in their life cycle often must be recognized as an individual for traceability. Products in medtech, automotive, and industry today are often labelled (stickers) or laser-marked for this purpose. Co-founders André, Klaus, Cornelia, and Mathias (all NTB Buchs) are working with Prof Zbinden (HSR), Dr. Lamprecht (NTB) and Prof. Kristiansen (FHNW) and developed a novel mold insert, that embosses individual machine-readable 2D-codes on every single device. Their “DynamicMold” technology allows to directly mark every single plastic component with an individual code in their forming process, without adding manufacturing time or facility space. Even the combination of individual codes with optical security structures can be provided. matriq's innovation will replace the conventional downstream technologies, at lower cost and reduced complexity, higher speed, smarter, and, at the same time, counterfeit-proof and unique. The market for product marking is very large, for traceability around EUR 7 bn, (7% CAGR) and anti-counterfeit goods in EU worth >EUR 60 bn. The team plans to use Venture kick funds to set-up a test site for demonstrating versatility and increase visibility of their technology.