Ecohelix has been granted €2.2 million in funding from the prestigious European Union’s LIFE Programme (LIFE-2024-SAP-ENV call) for our pioneering LIFE WOODMER project. This significant funding enables Ecohelix to bring novel heat seal coating to the market by adding formulation capability to Ecohelix demo production.
The main objective of the LIFE WOODMER project is to scale up and demonstrate Ecohelix´s unique solution for sustainable and cost-efficient wood-based biopolymers and more specifically the end product WOODMER® Seal – a heat seal coating solution for fibre-based packaging, replacing fossil- and food-based polymers including hazardous PFAS chemicals in packaging coating materials.
Project overview
Unsustainable consumption fuels global warming, ecosystem degradation, and CO2 emissions. As a result, sustainability targets such as the UN Sustainability Goals (SDG) and regulatory frameworks like the EU Green Deal, pressure industries to reduce their negative environmental impact. These are further fuelled by geopolitical uncertainty that requires economic resilience for a robust European economy. Industries face pressure to phase out fossil-based and food-based materials. Meanwhile, the forestry sector has struggled with a need to improve circularity, resource utilization and profitability.
Coatings are needed to provide necessary properties for packaging. These properties include functional barriers against oil and grease, water vapor and oxygen and are typically created by using fossil-based barriers, such as polyethylene or other plastics. Packaging industry is transitioning towards paper&board based packaging. These materials need fibre-based barrier coatings to complete the transformation from plastics and fossil-based packaging materials into fibre-based solutions.
Ecohelix introduces a revolutionary and patented solution to these challenges, with an industrially scalable, economic, and environmentally friendly concept that is safe for human consumption and locally abundant in the EU. Our innovation, WOODMER®, is a novel high performing, wood-based polymer, that valorises neglected pulp industry side streams has high environmental profile and provides necessary properties for the packaging.
Industrial partners, Seaman Paper, Kemira and Colombier provide test cases for the project
Development of WOODMER® Seal formula that is optimized for the use on selected Seaman Paper products enabling replacement of plastic products on the market. Suitability of formulates for flexoprinting technology as well as evaluation of coating performance will be performed by the company.
Kemira will take part in the trials and evaluation of the innovative biopolymers that will be validated in the project. This includes testing of the polymers as well as an evaluation of performance and relevant market needs. Kemira are interested in verifying the properties of WOODMER® Seal in heat-seal applications.
Colombier will be the partner that perform industrial scale rod coating tests of our WOODMER® Seal coating. The test will confirm (a) runnability i.e. that there are no problems in the coating and cutting process that we get an even and homogenous coating etc (b) that we can maintain the properties required (heat-seal and barrier properties etc.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
