Hamburg-based, circular biomaterials startup one • fıve (pronounced: one point five) has raised over €10.5 million in seed funding, led by a syndicate of best in class European impact investors, including Planet A Ventures, Speedinvest, Green Generation Fund, Climentum Capital, Revent and WEPA Ventures among others.
one • fıve is a biomaterials discovery, development, and scale-up company founded by Martin Weber, former CFO of leading vertical indoor farming unicorn Infarm and Claire Hae-Min Gusko, previously Head of Business Strategy at Infarm. It provides customized, cleaner, and circular packaging solutions in record time; designed to drop into existing consumer packaging value chains to create a measurable, positive impact on the environment. With a mission to accelerate the transformation of the global packaging supply chain, one • fıve’s team of 30 interdisciplinary team members has raised over 10 million Euros in funding to date.
Their initial focus is on high-performance, functional coatings for paper-based packaging solutions. Their sales pipeline contains over 40 million square meters of materials from partnerships with leading FMCG brand owners and packaging converters. one • fıve is now launching a replacement for the non-recyclable multi-layer single-use sachets targeting the Asian market and plans to tackle the highly pollutive $1 trillion packaging market, reducing carbon emissions with their biomaterials by up to 76%.
These single-use sachets have “fueled a global waste crisis…littering neighborhoods, jamming garbage dumps, choking waterways and harming wild creatures.” according to Reuters’ Unilever’s Plastic Playbook. Conventional plastics cause a whopping 4.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (World Economic Forum, 2021), and about 11 million metric tonnes of plastic waste enter the world’s oceans yearly (earth.org,2022).
“We believe the right material solution already exists; the problem is, it’s not ready for the market. Our machine learning platform discovers and assesses biomaterial innovations slumbering in research institutions. The team then transforms the most attractive solutions into market-ready products the industry will accept.” says co-founder Claire Hae-Min Gusko.
one • fıve augments their team of in-house material experts with dedicated researchers (called “Scientists in Residence”) from leading research institutions like the Fraunhofer IVV, the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and the renowned Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In addition, a growing network of distributed scale-up partners supplements in-house equipment and infrastructure.
“Our solutions need to be deployed in the existing supply chain. Impactful solutions can be brought to market much faster and at scale when we leverage industry capabilities. We design materials to be recovered and reused in existing waste streams. Where leakage is likely to occur, materials safely degrade in the natural environment and cause no lasting harm.” says co-founder Martin Weber.
Sauce packets for European quick service restaurants will be piloted next in partnership with Develey and established European converters.
“There is overwhelming industry demand, especially around the transition from the polluting status-quo towards innovation-led cleaner alternatives, making one • fıve the extended work-bench of converters.” explains Marie-Helene Ametsreiter, General Partner at Speedinvest.
“FMCG companies are under-equipped to make required changes to their supply chains, and they are actively seeking help in this transition-one • fıve’s pipeline of corporate partners consists of some of the largest brands in the world looking to get in on their development capabilities.” says Dr Manon Sarah Littek, Founding Partner of Green Generation Fund.
