During our development activites we build a robust, more sustainable and commercially attractive process, which de-risks the further scale-up of our technology. However, significant investment will be required to establish our first plant and this remains a challenge especially under curent market conditions.
On the other hand, we have made great progress to implement our material into several applications like footwear, tires and automotive goods by closely collaborating with customers and partners. Now, we are working towards commercialising the technically validated products, but material supply at an acceptable cost for our customers is a major bottleneck. To by-pass this issue we are now establishing a supply chain based on contract manufacturing. However, when approaching ton-scale production for European supply, we will need to comply with the REACH regulation for new chemicals and materials, adding cost and delaying our time-to-market. As this is a considerable burden for early-stage companies, a public funded office to support REACH applications for start-ups would be greatly beneficial and accelerate the commercialisation of innovative technologies in the EU.
Finally, the market implementation of our Reselo Rubber is also limited by a rather undefined EU strategy of how and when fossil-based materials are supposed to be phased out. Therefore, clear and impactful legislative incentives to implement renewable materials would greatly support our efforts.
Finally, we currently valorise only one of three fractions isolated from birch bark through our biorefinery process. While the remaining fractions can serve as energy source, further research and development are needed to find non-energy applications for these compounds. Importantly, first efforts are already described in the literature to valorise also these isolated compounds with some applications are being commercialised in low volume markets.
