Green Startup Traceless Replaces Plastics With Compostable Materials #GSA22
Executive Summary
Johanna Baare is the founder of Traceless Materials, a startup that produces compostable materials to replace plastic. She was recently awarded the German Startup Award for “Female Newcomer of the Year 2022.” Congratulations, Johanna! The award is presented by the German Startup Association. Baare’s company is just one of many startups fighting plastic pollution. It’s estimated that 40% of today’s plastic waste ends up in the environment. This has devastating consequences for wildlife and ecosystems. Traceless Materials’ products will decompose in nature in two to ten weeks, without leaving any trace. Baare is one of many female entrepreneurs leading the charge against plastic pollution. We need more innovators like her to create a cleaner, greener future for us all.
“Our material is not recyclable, it is compostable. This means if the material ends up in nature it will disappear within two to ten weeks with no trace, no plastics or even microplastics”
Johanna Baare COO and co-founder Traceless
German Startup Awards 2022
This interview is in media partnership with the German startup association (Bundesverband Deutscher Startups https://deutschestartups.org/). Their German Startup Awards #GSA22 honor each year outstanding female and male founders and investors in special categories. You can learn more about the winners in our interview and on this website: https://germanstartupawards.de/rueckblick/rueckblick-2022
You can also have a look at our history, we also interviewed many winners of the German Startup Awards 2021 already.
“Our material can replace the plastic material in a takeaway plastic coffee cup and make it completely compostable.”
Johanna Baare COO and co-founder Traceless
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The Video Interview is set to go live on Tuesday, November 22nd 2022
The Audio Interview
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“We just started the process of fundraising to build a small-scale industry plant, where we can offer our material for a competitive price to bioplastic. Produced on an industrial scale, we will be price competitive to virgin plastic.”
Johanna Baare COO and co-founder Traceless
The Founder
Johanna Baare (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanna-baare/) is the COO and co-founder of Traceless Materials (https://www.traceless.eu/), an innovative Hamburg-based startup company that specializes in sustainable and eco-friendly materials. She has a background in psychology, which comes in handy for her current role in hr and team building. She also holds an MBA from IE Business School. Before Traceless Materials, she was the COO of a Malmö-based startup where she gained valuable experience in the SaaS industry. Her experience in consulting and management have been invaluable in her current role. Under her leadership, Traceless Materials has become one of the leading companies in its field.
The Startup
Founded in 2020 by two female entrepreneurs, Traceless is a startup that produces biomaterials to replace plastic (https://www.traceless.eu/about-us). Johanna met her co-founder Anne at ProjectTogether (https://projecttogether.org/) in Berlin, which matches co-founders. The material is compostable, meaning it breaks down into natural substances in two to ten weeks without leaving any trace of microplastic. The company’s mission is to reduce the environmental impact of plastic waste. In addition to being compostable, the biomaterial is also recyclable and biodegradable. Traceless is currently working on developing a variety of applications for their biomaterial, including packaging, food service items, and medical supplies. The company has already received funding from several venture capital firms and the European Union. With its innovative biomaterial and commitment to sustainability, Traceless is poised to make a significant impact in the fight against plastic pollution.
The team is looking to build a first industrial-scale plant approximately size of one hectare (107,000 square feet). The next step would be to produce at an industrial scale where the team is looking right now to match the price of non-recycled, aka virgin plastic. The big advantage of their material is that traditional plastic producers can use their granulate in existing machines. This will significantly lower the costs for companies who want to produce sustainable plastic and could eventually lead to replacing a large percentage of traditional plastic with this new sustainable option.
Venture Capital Funding
Traceless has raised 2,8 M US$ in funding, from 4 investors, including the European Innovation Council and HTGF (link interview CEO). Of these are 2,4 mn Euros from the EU. Right now Traceless is looking for investors to build a small-scale industrial plant to produce more of their material.
Traceless is Hiring
You can have a look at their jobs website to learn more
Tune in to our Internet Radio Station here:
Further Readings / Additional Resources
Casa Dani in Madrid https://www.casadani.es/ Johanna recommends tortilla de patata.
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The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:
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Topics Discussed in this Interview
In this interview we are talking about plastic, biodegradable, compostable, bioplastic, virgin plastic, one-way coffee cup, plastics industry, plastic pollution, compost, industrial production, industrial scale, impact startup, green startup, startup funding, funding round, sustainability, sustainable startup, sustainable startups, business model, teams, psychology, münster, Madrid, MBA, polymers, polymer chemistry
Automated Transcript
[0:00] Music.
[0:08] Startuprad.io your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German Speaking Startup Scene.
[0:13] Music.
[0:19] Hello and welcome everybody this is Joe from celebrated Arrow your startup podcast and you do block from Germany as well as the world’s first internet radio station dedicated to startups and Tech entrepreneurship called.
Dot radio today I would like to welcome your Hanna
as the winner of the drum startup words for female newcomer of the Year 2022 welcome and congratulations.
[0:47] Hey so thanks for having me only my pleasure we might.
At that the this podcast is in partnership with the German startup a cessation obviously and the German start of awards
as we did last year already we are bringing you several winners of the
#gsa22 and here is another awesome example also this interview is brought to you by startuprad.io come the most intuitive and easiest way to find cooperation partners
and investors so now that we got through this you are the CEO and co-founder of traceless materials
based in Hamburg when I look through a little bit before the interview I was wondering would you guys consider yourself a green start up a sustainable
important impacts that up.
[1:40] All of the above so with traceless we are bringing a holistically sustainable alternative material to Conventional Plastics and
to the market so sustainability and impact is definitely at the core of what we’re doing because we.
Our entire traceless team motivated by the impact that with our solution we can make on the issue of the global plastic pollution.
And to make it really clear for everybody who tuned in here because they’re True Crime Fant traceless does not refer to missing people but that the material
you use that could replace plastic is traceless Lee recyclable.
Not recyclable but compostable so actually if products made from our material end up in the environment such as up to 40% of all plastic ways to dust today then it completely compose there
without leaving any Trace traceless.
[2:41] That means if you get a compost in your garden you can basically use this material and instead of throwing it into the bin.
You can throw it on there and what’s the time frame for like completely to disintegrate.
Yeah material composed in a time span of 2 to 10 weeks that depends a little bit of it on its thickness but then it’s completely gone and has left no Trace no plastics no microplastics behind.
Sounds pretty promising before we get into this material and I’ve seen you stuck to the MS because you studied in münster and Madrid.
Including graduating with an MBA from IE business school you also a psychologist and business major by training and I was wondering are you currently unloading me
no I’m not you get this question a lot as a psychologist but actually what I took from my psychology is studies is really how to work
with people because I specialist in work and organizational psychology how to lead.
Grow and build teens which is something that comes quite handy when it now comes to building a startup we should get into that.
[3:58] I’ve been to Madrid in the past and I really love their churros con chocolate which is also your favorite dish.
I’m favoring thing more the the Savory side of things I’m really into
the intuitive tea added patata so actually you should go to Casa Donnie in Madrid next time you’re they and try that idea that Peta is the best.
I said Annie okay I’m you have to provide me with a link afterward so everybody can check it out
went looking through your CV you post on LinkedIn of course as always your LinkedIn profile will be linked on our blog post where ever you’re listening the do this or watching this either check out medium.com forward slash
- IO or a click on the link if you see this on YouTube or listen to it on
any kind of podcasting app there is a link to our medium blog and there are all the show notes including of course the link to your LinkedIn profile.
That’s it you have been with a consulting company how did he end up there.
[5:07] Good question actually I started working with them as an intern as part of my psychology studies and then very quickly start a garden offer for a
contract to continue working with them after the internship and due to internal circumstances very early on was giving a lot of responsibilities for first a project in Germany
then ultimately growing a team in Germany and the entire German business for that Consulting I would call them a startup.
Point still as well because when I started working there we were 12 employees and over the time span of the seven and a half years that I worked
with them growing the German Market also the entire company grow
to 100 employees worldwide and that is actually the expertise growing both my own team but also helping to scale the entire company’s team with professionalizing the processes and
bringing in Frameworks to organize work between different countries and between different teams that is the expertise that ultimately I took and apply now to to our start up myself.
[6:21] And then I found a big break because from being a consultant including to German tax companies you became the CEO oh
of sass company based in mind mu in Sweden and 2019 and I was wondering.
[6:40] What happened there yeah in between exactly I did my MBA at IE business school I he’s very.
[6:49] Focus on intrapreneurship on startups on building companies and that idea stuck with me but back then I didn’t have an idea myself.
Building my
own company so I decided to go into the startup World understand and learn where I could apply my expertise and growing teens and growing companies best and I learned
to get to know the founder
of that social impact startup in Malmo Sweden and became the CEO with the idea to grow that company to run the first financing round and then unfortunately covid hit and made it very hard for social impact
to raise money but at that point I had already met my now co-founder and the inventor of the technology behind traceless.
But the startup part pinion panty on.com is it still around.
They pivoted we actually pivoted back then still at the beginning onset of traceless to become a B2B service.
And yes latest news I have heard that they at the founder was trying to sell it honestly I don’t know yet if she was successful there yet.
[8:07] Hmm hmm hmm we will see and okay you’ve been in Consulting
doing lots and lots of excel sheets and PowerPoint then you came to software-as-a-service impact startup and then he decided to go into physical products replacing plastic
how did this happen.
[8:33] Yeah so on the end I met through the project together and impact incubator program in Berlin that matches people with great ideas and inventions
as on the head one with people with business expertise for example as I have and for all the time spent on for about six months I
Mentor Donna in when she first started about thinking of founding a business based on her idea and after the program and I said yes
I will do this but I need help I need somebody on my side who has that baseness expertise that is necessary and when she asked me if I wanted to co-found with her.
It it took me very very brief time to make my mind up and make the decision because.
[9:21] Through cutting getting to know on a through this process and understanding really the huge opportunity behind traceless both from the impact that we can realize with this technology but also of course the business opportunity
I was very easily convinced this product this solution must come to Market.
And you co-founder Anna you already said so it’s an old lady’s team but she’s a process engineer is that right.
Yes and there’s a process engineer who specialized in biorefinery and at the same time also co-founded the Cradle to cradle Regional group.
In Hamburg
and with these different backgrounds on the one hand the process engineering background specializing in biorefinery and on the other hand the Cradle to cradle concept she managed
to develop and yeah invent the traceless technology but you got the award right.
In this case I got the award I actually don’t know who and why I was nominated but it takes a team actually to pull off an idea like traceless you said it’s
an old female team that’s not true yes Anna and is found as we are both women but there is an entire team behind us and without them it.
[10:42] Be possible hmm yeah yeah we just can’t build a startup just by yourself I’m getting a little bit into traceless.
[10:53] I know this is wrong but I read it in different blog posts about you and interviews so that it turns site products of food production in
compostable plastic replacement and that should include starch and fibers but you said before we started interviewing that is wrong tell us why.
[11:14] It is actually true that me take residues of agriculture
food processing but we do not do is process or make a plastic out of them and that is very important because our material does not fall under the EU single-use Plastics directive because it is not a plastic.
But a biomaterial and because it is a biomaterial not the synthetically derived.
That is why it remains or maintains that quality of being compostable in the environment it is a purely natural material that composed it’s like a leaf that falls from the tree
in the time span of as I said earlier to to 10 weeks so very very quickly but the bottom line is it’s not a plastic but you can.
Replace this one use plastic with it it in some instances where.
[12:13] Your product up by the way what’s the name of the product traceless materials traceless materials
it’s a little bit confusing draft the Chrysler startup and the traceless materials but we stick to traceless materials when can replace traceless materials.
One time use plastic so this what is special about our biomaterial is that it can be processed
is on the existing Machinery of the plastic converting industry so they can use our granule as they are today using plastic or bioplastic granules and further processes into materials into products.
For the consumer facing Goods industry and we are of course mainly targeting products that can either easily end up in the environment.
[13:00] Or products that cannot be recycled and these are mainly packaging applications but also many many single use products.
What comes to mind for me would be like a shampoo shampoo bottles saw bottles and stuff like this.
Yes but also you to go coffee cup you to go snack bar the ice cream spoon or the fries Fork that if you maybe eat it outside sometimes they just fall on the floor and then
might not get picked up I understand and basically if we talking about
cup here for coffee admittedly I’m a big coffee fan the question would be is it
only your material that you would need for this cup or Woody need to combine it with other materials.
Both is a potential but you probably as an avid coffee lover probably sometimes get your coffee to go as well and then usually they come into are in paper cups right now.
[14:06] As a first Association as end consumers we might think oh that’s a paper coat that’s great that’s sustainable
but actually we know that paper doesn’t really have a great barrier to water so all these paper cups are lined with plastic they are coated with plastic so that the coffee stays intact and our material can actually substitute that plastic coating.
Making the paper could really or maintaining really the compostable T of the paper and making the paper cup sustainable
and at the same time usable to hold water or coffee or whatever else you might want to drink
I see so basically instead of bad plastic inside and more or less awesome.
Paper on the outside you can have traceless inside paper on the outside and we are all good exactly
and could you also make sorry guys I’m taking a little detour but my frequent listeners already know that and could you also make the lid
out of your material traceless material yes of course that could also be a possibility yeah
so it’s pretty interesting and my understanding is right now you’re producing this on small scale and of course it’s more expansive than
plastic right now actually in the beginning.
[15:27] The industry also did some experimentation with materials not from
oil but actually they stuck with the oil with the plastic because it was much cheaper do you see a future where you can scale the process sufficiently to make it
ask Jeep or competitive with plastic or wood you need to tweak and improve your process further
no actually we working on that right now because the interest in the market from our existing customers is huge and of course.
[16:02] To substitute plastic and entire product lines
we need a lot of our material and we currently have a pilot production plant running with which we are producing sufficient material for First Market Pilots that we’re going to bring to Market in the next month but
and of course ultimately our customers are not interested in Pilots they want to substitute plastic on large-scale so we are actually currently starting our next financing round too big on build our next
bigger
production facility is small-scale industry plant and at that scale we will already be able to offer material materials price competitive to bioplastics
and on industrial production scale we will be able to sell our material price competitive to Virgin plastic and that’s when it becomes really interesting
huh.
That would have been my next question because when you said it becomes competitive to plastic I could hear some of the investors listening scrubbing their feet on the floor where can I learn more because we know more than 40 45 percent of our audience is listening for investment opportunities
getting a little bit background here you have publicly stated that you race more than two point
eight million u.s. dollars in funding from for investors including the European Innovation Council.
[17:26] H TT F high-tech corner for of course we have an interview with the with the CEO of high-tech Corner phone you can find down here in the show notes.
Of this to point.
Eight million 2.9 are actually from the European Union from The Innovation Council I’ve heard that is quite a competitive process right.
Yes the EIC is Federated application is quite competitive it is quite difficult but of course with what we’re doing with traceless
really offering as the solution to the global plastic pollution this is exactly what the EU is looking for and therefore I believe we they were right to choose us and to help us to scale this solution and what is the ultimately the
the objective of the AC accelerator to help technology Innovations to really come to scale and being able to
fulfill their promises talking about a bigger production facility here what do to people.
[18:34] Are addicted potential investors.
Need to have in mind when we talk about a bigger production facility are we talking about an overseas container or are we talking about like an overseas container ship size.
We’re talking about a little under one hectare of size of the plant so it is big it is Big that next bigger plant.
Really to become competitive in the Plastics industry we need also to being able to offer.
[19:09] Amounts of material that can be competitive to in the Plastics industry right and so that is ultimately our goal to really be competitive on industrial production scale to the Plastics and bioplastics Industry
a little cheat sheet for our US based audience here I know you hate metric system that is approximately 100
thousand square feet one ha it’s exactly little bit different of course it’s 107,000 639 square feet but
just say 100,000 square feet and now he got an approximate idea what we’re talking about here so 10,000 feet by 10,000 feet.
[19:52] Brought that I’m not so good with the metric system but I completely believe you the word Google told me.
Now that we talked a little bit but about that what are you looking for in terms of
total funding when will when are you targeting to close your round and what need investors to do in order to get in I would assume go to our show notes reach out to you on LinkedIn.
[20:22] Exactly so we just starting the round now so if you want to get involved be quick
that is my first notion here yeah we looking with this round to really Finance the next bigger production plan so we are looking for investors that cannot only
support us financially but that also bring something else to the table that supports our business model one of the pillars of our business model and that could be either from the impact site
that could also be from the technological side having experience with scaling up production processes with biotechnology with biorefinery
or of course from the market side investors that have a big Network in the consumer-facing goods industry or even better in the Plastics and Plastics converting industry.
[21:13] Mmm that sounds good of course the next usual question is I’ve seen you have.
Around 20 24 employees right now on LinkedIn are you guys currently hiring
that’s a good question yes we are always looking for good talent and probably the difficulty for you to find the right number is that we just hired a bunch of new people for the
a couple of days ago as well so yes we are continuously growing and always looking for good talent that is motivated and wants to join our team
to solve Global plastic pollution together with us usually the answer I always get is good coders.
I would assume you also need some people who are knowledgeable about aquaculture products process engineering stuff like this like.
Really special specialists.
Yes absolutely so yeah we’re not looking for coders sorry over there but really worried you you’re the first slot I’ve been quite some time that is not looking for developers awesome.
[22:15] So everybody else we’re looking for exactly people with engineering backgrounds people with backgrounds in chemistry polymer chemistry especially specifically natural polymers of course and product development so yeah have a look on our website we always have the open job
positions listed there and of course you’ll share the links with us and we’ll have it in the show notes again on our medium block you Hannah.
[22:43] That was basically everything I want to talk about with you.
Thank you very much again congratulations begin becoming the female newcomer of the Year 2022 and thank you very much for the German.
Startup a cessation for hooking us up here.
Thanks a lot for the interview it was fun Joe totally my pleasure have a great day bye bye thank you too bye.
[23:11] Music.
