Ecohelix wins Henkel Innovation Challenge
More Sustainable Surfactants for Home & Personal Cleaning Products. Winning Ecohelix innovation provides a natural wood-based biopolymer called WOODMER® to potentially replace currently used fossil-based material components in Henkel´s future product portfolios. Innovation can improve the environmental profile of products in home & personal care, which we use on a daily basis.
INNOVATE2030 Challenge is organized by Ekipa, bringing together established companies, researchers, young professionals, students and startups to develop new approaches and innovations focusing on achieving SDG13 – Climate Action.
In this challenge Henkel was looking for new innovations to make it´s home & personal care cleaning products more sustainable. These products are widely used in our everyday life. Key question in this challenge was, how to achieve sustainable transformation of raw materials for the products, while keeping the same cleaning and compatible performance in regards to current formulation system.
"Ecohelix participated to the challenge with it´s WOODMER® biopolymer. It has shown potential as an adhesive, coating and a functional polymer in several industrial areas, including homecare application", says Petri Oinonen, Ecohelix Founder and CEO. "It´s origin is in the wood and sourcing can be made in relevant scales from the pulping industry in a highly sustainable way. The polymer has high performing properties and is fully sourced from FSC certified northern forests".
"Ecohelix showed innovativeness and provided a solution, which has high environmental profile and which could have potential in Henkel products", said Rolf Bayersdörfer, Corporate Director Open Innovation and New Business from Henkel. "Winning factors of Ecohelix were the advanced stage of development, it´s significant sustainability impact with WOODMER® biopolymer as well as through its broad application range and cooperative team", stated Shuqing Wang, Manager R&D Venturing at Henkel.
Ecohelix and Henkel will now start to verify the potential of WOODMERs in homecare applications and possibly apply it in winning, new, innovative and sustainable products for Henkel in homecare applications.
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