Woola secures €2.5M funding to replace plastic with sustainable packaging

Today, Estonian sustainable packaging company Woola announced a funding round of €2.5 million.

The company creates protective wool packaging to replace plastic. 

141 million tonnes of plastic packaging is produced yearly, of which only about 14 percent is collected for recycling, and an even smaller fraction is actually recycled.

At the same time, up to 90 percent of sheep wool is burned or buried in European countries – amounting to 200,000 tonnes of wool that goes unused every year in Europe because it's too coarse for the textile industry. 

Since WoolaÄs was founded in 2020, the company's focus has been on replacing bubble wrap in e-commerce. Now, the company is expanding its offering to the luxury goods market. 

Woola's CEO and co-founder Anna-Liisa Palatu shared: 

"We founded Woola to help stop the use of fossil fuels. 

Two Houses of the LVMH Group are already using Woola packaging to replace plastic, and we are implementing a circular pilot program with one of them.

We are proud to be working with a Group that, with its Maisons, is reinventing the packaging codes to ban fossil-based plastics ultimately." 

One of the largest companies in Europe, the LVMH Group, has outlined a path to zero virgin fossil-based plastic packaging by 2026 in its environmental performance roadmap. 

The funding is led by Metaplanet and followed by Future Ventures and Lemonade Stand, both investors of Woola since 2021, along with new angel investors. 

"Beauty often lies in simplicity," said Metaplanet's Managing partner Rauno Miljand. 

"Woola is rescuing a natural resource – sheep wool – from ending up in landfills and using it to help retailers reach their sustainability targets. This is done via a product innovation cycle and a quick feedback loop with the customers." 

Woola will use the new funds to grow its sales and marketing team and expand its product offering for the luxury and e-commerce markets.

Pic supplied by Woola.