In Finland, Metsä Spring Oy, the innovation and venture capital arm of forest industry major Metsä Group has revealed that it has made an equity investment in Woodio Oy, a leading developer of waterproof wood composite products. The financing round totals approximately EUR 4 million, and Metsä Spring participates in the round together with current investors Ardent Venture BV, Finow Oy, NextStone Oy, and Valve Ventures Oy.
Founded in 2018, the purpose of Metsä Spring is to identify and help the selected companies reach a Proof-of-Concept relevant in the context of Metsä Group’s business ecosystem.
Closing the series A financing round is a significant milestone for Woodio on the company’s path to becoming a major international design and material technology company. We are pleased to extend our partner network with Metsä Group, which complements the industry competences of the early investors. The new partnership will contribute positively to Woodio’s ongoing build-up of an efficient supply chain for its products, said Eerik Paasikivi, Chair of Woodio’s Board of Directors.
Novel technology
Woodio’s proprietary technology enables the valorisation of Metsä Group’s underutilised side-streams into long-lived, value-added products. A potential industrial side-stream, to be used in the Woodio material, is undersized woodchips generated in wood chipping at several Metsä Group mills.
The direction, in which startups join forces with large companies, thus harnessing effectively the best qualities of both worlds, adds an important dimension to securing forest industry’s competitiveness also in the future. We are excited about the new collaboration and of being at the forefront pioneering new practises related to future use of the Finnish forest-related know-how, innovativeness, and resources. The series A financing enables us to start a new phase in the development of Woodio. Most importantly, it enables us to better serve our customers by setting up in-house manufacturing and expanding our product portfolio, said Petro Lahtinen, CEO & Founder of Woodio.
The combination of using a side-stream as the main raw material and a product storing carbon dioxide (CO2) for a long time is also expected to be very competitive when assessing the environmental footprint of this new biomaterial against the existing commercial solutions of today.
Woodio’s first success, in terms of sales, comes from using this technology in the production of bathroom and kitchen washbasins. This is the second investment by Metsä Spring. Through its first investment Metsä Spring is developing a new process for the production of textile fibres from wood pulp.
