Spawnfoam | Increasing reforestation success with a novel fungi-based bio-compound material

Summary
Reforestation projects have a failure rate of 25%, which generate internal project losses of around 450M€/year and reduces the financial sustainability of forestation at global level.
At the same time, agricultural and forestry production as well as various agro-industries annually produce tons of waste that can be used in the production of 100% biodegradable biocomposites, allowing a useful destination for these wastes and contributing to the circular economy.
With a central focus on the circular economy, we have created our company SPAWNFOAM specifically to commercialize our novel biocomposite material constituted by forest residues that function as a matrix that can be colonized by a fungal mycelium that will assume the role of bonding agent.
Our first application of the Spawnfoam material is a plant pot specifically engineered for the reforestation market, that increases the survival rate of plants, and also their growth, due to proprietary functionalization of our pot with specific minerals and structures that provide water and nutrients directly to plants, while protecting root systems and are biodegradable.
As a startup created in January 2017 specifically for the development and commercialization of SPAWNFOAM, this project is the core of our company’s strategy. We have secured a total of over 75.000€, of which 50.000€ from the Portuguese Environmental Fund to study the proof-of-concept of Spawnfoam and are now closing a 100.000€ grant to implement the pre-industrial proof of concept, our next milestone before large-scale implementation and global market replication, which we wish to study with the SME Instrument Phase 1 Feasibility Study.
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Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/827643
Start date: 01-07-2018
End date: 31-10-2018
Total budget - Public funding: 71 429,00 Euro - 50 000,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

Reforestation projects have a failure rate of 25%, which generate internal project losses of around 450M€/year and reduces the financial sustainability of forestation at global level.
At the same time, agricultural and forestry production as well as various agro-industries annually produce tons of waste that can be used in the production of 100% biodegradable biocomposites, allowing a useful destination for these wastes and contributing to the circular economy.
With a central focus on the circular economy, we have created our company SPAWNFOAM specifically to commercialize our novel biocomposite material constituted by forest residues that function as a matrix that can be colonized by a fungal mycelium that will assume the role of bonding agent.
Our first application of the Spawnfoam material is a plant pot specifically engineered for the reforestation market, that increases the survival rate of plants, and also their growth, due to proprietary functionalization of our pot with specific minerals and structures that provide water and nutrients directly to plants, while protecting root systems and are biodegradable.
As a startup created in January 2017 specifically for the development and commercialization of SPAWNFOAM, this project is the core of our company’s strategy. We have secured a total of over 75.000€, of which 50.000€ from the Portuguese Environmental Fund to study the proof-of-concept of Spawnfoam and are now closing a 100.000€ grant to implement the pre-industrial proof of concept, our next milestone before large-scale implementation and global market replication, which we wish to study with the SME Instrument Phase 1 Feasibility Study.

Status

CLOSED

Call topic

EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020

Update Date

27-10-2022
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