Tallinn-based Woola recently secured €2.5 million in funding from investors such as Metaplanet, Future Ventures, Lemonade Stand, and new angel investors. Specializing in sustainable packaging solutions, Woola utilizes sheep wool to replace plastic packaging in ecommerce and luxury markets. The funding infusion is earmarked for scaling operations, primarily bolstering the sales and marketing teams and diversifying the product line to further penetrate the luxury and ecommerce sectors, fortifying their mission to combat plastic waste with eco-friendly alternatives.
141 million tonnes of plastic packaging is produced every year, of which only about 14% is collected for recycling, and an even smaller fraction is actually recycled. At the same time, up to 90% of sheep wool is burned or buried in countries across Europe – amounting to 200 000 tonnes of wool that goes unused every year in Europe because it’s too coarse for the textile industry. The Estonian company Woola is tackling both of these issues at once, by creating protective wool packaging to replace plastic.
“We founded Woola to help stop the use of fossil fuels. We are replacing protective plastic packaging with sustainable alternatives made of wool that work just as well, but look much better, ” said Woola’s CEO and co-founder Anna-Liisa Palatu.
Since Woola was founded in 2020, the company’s focus has been on replacing bubble wrap in ecommerce. Now, the company is expanding its offering to the luxury goods market.
“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,” said Anna-Liisa. ”We are proud to be working with a Group that, with its Maisons, is reinventing the codes of packaging to ultimately ban fossil-based plastics.”
One of the largest companies in Europe, the LVMH Group has outlined a path to zero virgin fossil-based plastic packaging by 2026 in their environmental performance roadmap.
Earlier this year, Woola won the LVMH Innovation Award in the “Sustainability and Greentech” category and joined the Group’s business accelerator La Maison des Startups.
Woola will use the new funds to grow its sales and marketing team and expand its product offering for the luxury and ecommerce markets.
Metaplanet is the investment fund of Jaan Tallinn, one of the four founding engineers of Skype. The fund invests in innovation with the potential to produce an outsized return for the benefit of humankind. Metaplanet’s notable investments feature SpaceX, DeepMind and Anthropic. Future Ventures’ portfolio also includes SpaceX, as well as the Boring Company and Upside Foods. Woola has previously also attracted investments from the co-founders of Pipedrive, Bolt, Veriff and other 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, from ecommerce to the top companies in the world of aesthetics, reach their sustainability targets. All of this is done via a product innovation cycle and a quick feedback loop with the customers.”
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