Brisbane start-up Earthodic’s green protective paper, cardboard coating earns it $6m to expand

A Brisbane investment manager with a chemistry PhD has raised $6m after developing a fully recyclable protective coating for paper and cardboard packaging.

Earthodic’s bio-based protective coating for paper and cardboard keeps it 100 per cent recyclable

A Brisbane investment manager with a chemistry PhD has raised $6m after developing a fully recyclable protective coating for paper and cardboard packaging.

The protective coating is used to strengthen boxes and other packaging materials to carry produce as well as make them waterproof – like the lining on the inside of a paper coffee cup.

The idea arrives as online shopping continues to boom with cardboard and paper-based products treated with non-recyclable coatings used for deliveries now accounting for about 30 per cent of landfill, says Anthony Musumeci.

His start-up, Earthodic, wants to tackle this problem head on with a direct drop-in replacement to non-recyclable options which uses lignin – a form of organic polymers – that can be recycled time and time again.

“It’s basically a waste product of the pulp and paper industry and it is currently burned for its energy value or it ends up in landfill so it’s a massive problem for these companies,” Mr Musumeci said.

“The AMCORs and the international paper businesses of the world have literally millions of tonnes of this sitting around, and they’re looking for applications for it. So we take that as a raw ingredient and then we use that as one of the key ingredients which we mix back into our formulation and coat paper.”

Earthodic chief executive Anthony Musumeci, chief strategy officer Melissa Mail, chief operations officer Fiona Donaghey and chief technical officer Albert Tietz

Mr Musumeci is a two-time start-up founder who has tutored at the Queensland University of Technology, been an investment manager at Black Sheep Capital and UniSeed, and worked as a commercial director at foodtech business Nourish Ingredient. Prior to his latest venture he built a low-code data analytics platform for sports teams called Ludis Analytics but has since left to work on Earthodic while retaining a major stake in the business.

“I can’t write a load of code to save myself so I wasn’t much use for the software developers at Ludis,” he said.

At Earthodic, Mr Musumeci said he finally has a chance to combine his chemistry and philosophy degrees in a way that’s better for the environment but also makes commercial sense.

Earthodic’s protective coating solution has been shown to directly replace petrochemical-based or plastic-based solutions in the market without any adjustment to manufacturing processes.

Earthodic’s bio-based waterproof coating.

The idea has garnered a lot of attention from venture capitalists, who have put $6m behind the idea, supporting plans to build the business in the US.

The $6m funding round was led by FTW Ventures which set the terms for new investors Circulate Capital, Queensland Investment Corporation, UniQuest Fund, Significant Capital Ventures, Branch Venture Group and RedStick Ventures. Existing investors Tenacious Ventures, Investible and Closed Loop Partners also joined the round.

Earthodic will use the new funds to establish its US headquarters at the Innovation Centre in Kalamazoo at the Western Michigan University Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine, which has a pilot plant for testing different papers.

It will also use the money to fund some more research and development where the start-up is looking to tackle other products, including coffee cups.

“We’ve made coffee cups and we’ve got a heat sealable solution which we can also ultrasonically seal but it’s just getting that FDA certification which we’re working through at the moment that we need to be able to offer that to the market,” Mr Musumeci said.

Originally published as Brisbane start-up Earthodic’s green protective paper, cardboard coating earns it $6m to expand