Australian start up receives $200,000 grant to reinvent plastics using farmed seaweed

Well done to Western Australian company, Uluu for receiving AU $200,000 from the State Government’s Innovation Booster Grant (IBG) and the new Commercialisation Bridge Grant (CBG) programs.

The company recently raised AU $8.6 million to build a pilot plant, progress with first-to-market agreements, and develop a global brand around the Uluu story. As well as existing investors Main Sequence, Possible Ventures, Alberts and Misletoe Inc, some headline names such as Neil Perry from Rockpool and Karlie Kloss also invested.
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Uluu is committed to reduce global use of plastics which are produced from fossil fuels and release microplastics causes the accumulation of harmful waste after disposal and endangering flora, fauna, and human wellbeing.

Uluu uses farmed seaweed to produce PHAs - materials that are biocompatible, yet still provide the plastic-like properties. PHAs are reusable, recyclable, and compostable. They biodegrade, even if lost at sea! 

Uluu’s products are produced inside fermenters – not unlike brewing beer. The process involves 4 major steps.

1. Cook Seaweed - extract the sugars from seaweed using special enzymes
2. Ferment PHAs - Feed seaweed sugars to the PHA producing microbes
3. Extract PHAs – remove PHAs from inside the microbes
4. Make pellets – melt the PHAs to make pellets ready for product manufacturing.

Farmed seaweed can be regeneratively grown to entirely replace the fossil fuels we use to make four hundred million tonnes of plastic every year.

This is exactly the type of company EU impact investors are looking at!

Uluu co-founders Michael Kingsbury and Julia Reisser

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