FlexSea, a blue biotech company that develops seaweed derived bioplastic films, pellets, and polymers, announced a €2.3 million equity Seed round led by Indico Capital Partners, with the participation of RedRice Ventures, Btomorrow Ventures, Food Foundry, Vala Capital, ICON Capital, and Pente Capital. FlexSea’s total raised financing was over €3.4 million considering an additional €1.5 million in grants received from Innovate UK and other institutions. The capital will be deployed in the UK and Portugal, where the company has its teams.
Meant to be used in both dry food and non-food applications, FlexSea’s bioplastic films and rigid solutions are completely biodegradable in marine and soil environments, as well as home-compostable within 8-12 weeks. Furthermore, the film is transparent and heat-sealable, allowing it to be used in more visually demanding applications, while the pellets can be used in conventional plastic-making extrusion and injection machines.
The production of FlexSea’s biomaterials is highly sustainable, not requiring strong chemicals nor high temperatures exceeding 150ºC, uses renewable and natural ingredients, with water vapour as the only by-product. Additionally, all the scraps and cuts of extra production materials are industrially recyclable, meaning they can be melted back into different products. That, and using the full biomass from the seaweed on top of its extracts, enables 100% efficiency in raw material transformation. The company’s use of seaweed provides their greatest competitive advantage over other bioplastics. The type of seaweeds used by FlexSea grow in 45-days year-through cycles without the need for freshwater, arable land, pesticides, or fertilisers, allowing for very fast material turnover, in an efficient and sustainable way.
FlexSea’s CEO and co-founder, Carlo Fedeli, proudly announced: “This investment will allow us to make significant progress and penetrate the market effectively. Indico has a significant track record of closely backing founders and we are very happy to work together and with our other investors to take FlexSea to the next level.”, while co-founder and CTO, Thibaut Monfort, complemented: “This is a turning point for the company as an entity and a great reward for the hard work and dedication of the whole team of 10 amazing people who will benefit from this funding in their everyday research and development activities. We are heavily investing in equipment and machinery for in-house R&D, speeding up the process tremendously.”
