We present the participants and winners of the "Climate Innovation Vouchers" project - The Good Plastic Company, which produces Polygood material from secondary raw materials for furniture, interior and building cladding.
On the eve of the war, the Vesna Capital fund invested in the company (founders V. Popereshniuk, V. Klymov from Nova Poshta and A. Fedoriv from Fedoriv Agency). "The project is growing approximately three times a year," - noted Andriy Fedoriv in an interview with Forbes.
We tell you what kind of help The Good Plastic Company received from our project, and what successes they are now having. From the first mouth - from the company's operational director Viktoria Sedova.
ABOUT INNOVATION: incredible plastic panels
The Good Plastic Company has been around for five years, and from the beginning, we've strived to create a product that will help recycle as much plastic as possible. There were no such companies in the world that could make large plates from recycled plastic in industrial volumes. We were able to create a product that is sustainable circular – when already extracted resources remain in the industrial chain for maximum use of their value.
The Good Plastic Company helps designers, architects and world-renowned brands meet the new rules of the game and market conditions. Working with global brands such as Nike, Adidas, Samsung and LUSH, the company demonstrates that recycled materials can be integrated into any space and in large quantities.
ABOUT THE VOUCHER: after certification, they went to the "higher league"
We used the received voucher from the "Climate Innovation Vouchers" project in the amount of more than 35,000 euros for the development of three main areas: certification of materials, certification of our processes and patent - protection of intellectual property.
Various mechanical tests for fire resistance certification have shown that the properties of our materials meet European standards. Obtaining such a certificate opened the door for us to those projects where confirmation of the reliability of the material from a third party is a mandatory condition, for example, it concerns shopping centers or airports. Certifications open the door for us to communicate with large industrial clients.
Thanks to Cradle-to-Cradle certification, which confirms that our material is made entirely from recycled raw materials, we have also become more transparent. Our customers and potential customers have absolute confidence that Polygood meets the stated criteria, such as sustainability and circularity, so even now a third party is also responsible for this.
At the moment, there are only three companies that make a similar material in industrial volumes. But we will be the only one on the market who will have confirmation that we have a sustainable product and production, that our product on the 100% is created from recycled raw materials.
Thus, we became the first and so far the only producers in our sustainable category that have confirmation of the declared properties. This is especially important for Europe and Great Britain, where businesses work only with tested and certified materials. We can say that thanks to the certification, we have moved to the top league.
It is worth noting that we used almost half of the voucher amount from the Greencubator project to patent our technology and register the trademark of our Polygood material, which we are now even more actively promoting.
ABOUT SUCCESSES AND PLANS: relocation to Chernivtsi and the American dream
Despite the war, we continued to work, production did not stop. In the first days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, our workers came to the factory, which was then located in Bila Tserkva, to stick together. In March 2022, we were able to transfer both production and the team to safer Chernivtsi. We are currently receiving a grant that will cover this relocation for us. And in the first quarter of 2023, we worked at the maximum of our production!
Work and development in Ukraine continues. At home, we support community-oriented projects. For example, we recently cooperated with the "Ukraine without garbage" project, and also began to participate in projects for the construction of children's playgrounds in the de-occupied territories. The first such site is currently being built in Makarov.
Today, our company still focuses more on international projects, in which we can show our industrial scale and capabilities. Last year, together with the Lush brand, we opened stores in Taiwan, South Korea. This year, our materials were used in Samsung stores in Finland, France, Germany and Italy. 270 Nike stores around the world have boxes for collecting used shoes, which are also made from our Polygood.
This year we launched the distribution. Two Corian® distributors started working with us. This is a large industrial brand. Distributors of such large giants put us on the shelf as a sustainable equivalent of similar materials. They saw in our product and technology that we are a commensurate player in the market!
Thanks to the EBRD program, we also have the opportunity today to receive quality support for opening new markets. We are currently recruiting consultants to enter the Scandinavian market.
In fact, we have a lot of plans. This year, we have aggressive growth goals, and now the priority is the US.
Useful links:
· More about participation in the new wave of the project "Climate Innovation Vouchers" 2023 - https://cutt.ly/rwwXzl78
· More about The Good Plastic Company – https://thegoodplasticcompany.com/
