Spelt is an unused residue from grain processing. A Stuttgart-based start-up uses this natural material to produce an ecological packaging material that can replace expanded polystyrene (EPS) and other plastic foams and padding solutions. The young company has already produced numerous small batches and now wants to get started with automated production on a larger scale and has launched the financing round with a crowd-investing campaign.
It all began as a final project in the Packaging Development & Management degree programme at Stuttgart Media University. In 2021, Lisa Scherer, a Master's student at the time, developed an ecological packaging material from grain husks. This provide good insulating and shock-absorbing properties due to naturally grown cavities. „In order to achieve the porosity required for the cushioning and insulating effect, cavities and air pockets are created in conventional materials using a lot of energy. Instead of repeatedly processing fossil raw materials for new plastic packaging in an energy-intensive process, our organic packaging material consists of largely unutilised plant residues. The raw material for our packaging is produced in large quantities every day during local grain processing anyway. This means that no additional cultivation areas or resources are required and no additional trees are felled,“ explains Lisa Scherer.
Together with three other she founded the bioeconomy start-up Proservation at the end of 2022. The founding team includes packaging technician Sophia Scherer, business IT specialist Nils Bachmann and Henning Tschunt, who studied sustainable business management. In addition to the four founding members, the team has now grown to ten employees.
„We are currently working on automating production in order to manufacture larger quantities of our material with consistent quality. To this end, we worked with a mechanical engineering partner last year to record all process parameters and now want to transfer these findings into automated processes.“
Henning Tschunt, Managing Director
Successful crowdinvesting campaign
Proservation launched a crowd-investing campaign in January to raise funds. „The campaign went very well, after ten days we had already raised 80 per cent of our target amount of 500,000 euros. We have now extended it and increased it to 650,000 euros.“ The funds raised will be used to invested in further scaling, the automation of production capacities and the expansion of sales activities will be realised. A fully designed pilot plant is to be built this year. Henning Tschunt: „However, the aim is not to operate our own production in the long term, but to use our technology in a decentralised and regional manner via licensees and contract production. The synergy here would be that traditional polystyrene manufacturers who want to expand their product range to include natural materials integrate our plant into their production processes.“
Proservation co-founder Nils Bachmann adds: „Our aim is to strengthen regional value creation and thus increase our independence from international supply and production relationships. We cooperate with local husk mills and aim to minimise the transport distances required in the future by decentralising production as much as possible. Our long-term goal is to establish production sites for our solution wherever suitable residual materials are produced and fragile goods are packaged for transport.“
Natural material for transporting heavy goods
The new type of husk material is called RECOU and is suitable for use as a Packaging material for the transport of heavy goods. „There are currently hardly any natural materials on the market for their packaging,“ says Tschunt. „Our target market is so-called white goods, i.e. household electronics, washing machines, fridges, extractor bonnets and the like. Much of this is produced and packaged in South East Asia, but there are also German and European manufacturers. In any case, a lot of polystyrene is used for a short period of use, with the known negative environmental impact.“
