SUZANO-VENTURES
24.4.2024 09:02:29 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
Suzano Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Suzano, the world’s largest market pulp producer, has made a strategic investment into the Canadian materials science startup, Bioform Technologies. The investment provides up to US$5 million towards the company’s seed round, enabling it to accelerate the development of its novel bio-based plastic alternatives. The products can be manufactured through modified industrial processes already used in the pulp and paper sector.
Bioform’s proprietary technology rapidly produces wood pulp-reinforced hydrogels to create high-performance plastic alternatives, which can be made using Suzano’s wood pulp fibre as a key input. Bioform’s materials have the potential to be home compostable or recycled through existing paper recycling processes and do not require fossil-based inputs. The technology is highly versatile and has a number of applications where it could replace conventional single-use plastics, including paper recyclable thermoformable films for packaging applications and compostable heat-sealable films for pouches, agriculture, and garbage bags.
With the potential to offer an 80 percent lower carbon footprint than conventional single-use plastics, Bioform’s technology has similar or enhanced product performance to conventional plastics in areas such as tensile strength and permeability for oxygen or water vapor.
Chris Clark, Chief Executive Officer of Bioform Technologies, said:
“Our goal is to produce sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics at the speed of paper and at the cost of plastic. We are harnessing the speed and efficiency of pulp and paper manufacturing to make swift and impactful steps into the marketplace. The technical validation and strategic investment from Suzano Ventures gives us a link to the world’s largest market pulp producer. We can also access Suzano’s world-leading expertise to help us rapidly accelerate the production efficiencies and cost reductions needed to make a significant reduction in the reliance on single-use plastics.”
Paula Puzzi, Senior Manager at Suzano Ventures, said:
“We’ve looked closely at Bioform’s technology and we see great promise in their technology and ability to disrupt the industry. Around the world, there are a number of innovations being developed that each offer more sustainable alternatives to the mountains of single-use plastic that we throw away each year, polluting our cities and soils, rivers, and seas. The great challenge is scaling production and getting to cost competitiveness versus cheap single-use plastic. By using renewable material and harnessing established industrial processes and machinery from the pulp and paper sector, we believe that Bioform has the opportunity to disrupt established supply chains and rapidly replace the need for fossil-based materials.”
Bioform has previously raised US$2.4 million from direct investments and US$1.2 million from non-dilutive sources to streamline its technology and validate performance and processes in its labs. This funding from Suzano Ventures will enable the company to realize a demonstration facility to pilot its manufacturing process and expand its team and capabilities.
Headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil, Suzano is the world’s largest market pulp producer and one of Latin America’s largest paper manufacturers. Producing its pulp entirely from farmed eucalyptus, the company’s products reach over 2 billion people around the world in over 100 countries. Suzano has had a presence in Canada since 2015, with a large research and development center for pulp, paper, and biomaterials technologies located in Vancouver.
About Suzano Ventures
Suzano Ventures is the venture capital arm of Suzano, the world’s largest market pulp producer - the key raw material for paper and packaging products that are part of the lives of more than 2 billion people around the world in over 100 countries. We invest globally in businesses that are pioneering innovative approaches to harness the power of trees, to help build the future of the bioeconomy.
We are committing an initial US$70 million to support the development and growth of companies across four investment areas: novel applications for eucalyptus biomaterials, sustainable packaging, forestry technology, and carbon removal. We help startups to grow, which in turn have the potential to develop and help shape the future of Suzano’s business.
Our strategic investments deliver shared value. By placing science at the heart of business, we help early-stage startups to grow, which, in turn, have the potential to develop and help shape the future of Suzano's business.
We provide our portfolio companies with capital, technical expertise, and market insights, alongside access to our global operations, supply chain and customer base. This includes the ability to engage with our hundreds of scientists, engineers, and technologists, based at Suzano’s research centers and operations across four continents.
About Bioform Technologies
Founded in 2021, Bioform has developed a proprietary method to manufacture plastic alternatives based on wood pulp reinforced hydrogels at high speeds by modifying existing pulp and paper making machinery. The manufacturing process has a low carbon footprint and can produce highly versatile materials to replace a wide range of single use plastics. Bioform has developed both compostable and paper-recyclable films that can be heat sealed or thermoformed depending on the application.
Bioform’s core technology was developed at the University of British Columbia by co-founders Jordan MacKenzie, the company’s current CTO, and Mark Martinez, Professor, Bio-Products Institute, University of British Columbia.
For further information please contact Chris Clark at cclark@bioformtech.com
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240424575263/en/
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Accertify's Q2 Global Air Travel Fraud Report Finds Fraud Pressure Intensifying Across Middle East and Africa15.7.2026 13:00:00 CEST | Press release
Analysis of nearly 133 million airline booking transactions finds bookings departing from Cairo carried the world's highest fraud rate this quarter, while departure cities across the United States and Australia posted among the lowest fraud rates Accertify, a leading fraud decisioning provider whose Predictive Yes Platform helps merchants say yes to more good customers, more revenue, and more growth, today announced the release of its Global Air Travel Fraud Report: Q2 2026, a quarterly analysis examining how fraud pressure varies across global airline markets based on departure city at time of booking. Based on analysis of 132.9 million airline booking transactions processed between April and June 2026, the report evaluates prevented fraud rates across 537 departure cities that each processed at least 10,000 transactions during the quarter, providing airlines with a data-driven view of where Accertify's Predictive Yes platform intervened most frequently at booking. The Q2 findings rev
Forrester’s 2027 Budget Planning Guides: After A Year Of Caution, Business And Tech Leaders Are Ready To Invest Again15.7.2026 11:00:00 CEST | Press release
While leaders are betting on growth, in the age of AI, spending more is no longer enough According to Forrester’s (Nasdaq: FORR) 2027 Budget Planning Guides, business and technology leaders are approaching 2027 with renewed confidence as they increasingly accept volatility as a permanent feature of the business environment. After a year of more cautious spending, more than 80% of leaders expect their budgets to increase over the next 12 months, with as many as one-quarter anticipating growth of 10% or more. But planning in the age of AI demands more than bigger budgets: Increasing investment without modernizing operating models, strengthening data foundations, and improving AI readiness will only accelerate fragmented data, duplicated work, and technical debt. To realize AI’s full potential, leaders must rethink their strategies and prioritize investments in operational foundations, governance, and experimentation that drive tangible outcomes. This year, optimism is widespread across f
Post-Quantum’s Algorithm - Classic McEliece - Achieves Global ISO Standardization to Protect the World From Quantum Cyber Attack15.7.2026 10:00:00 CEST | Press release
Ultra-secure encryption algorithm added to ISO standard for Asymmetric Ciphers Classic McEliece is first PQC algorithm to achieve global standardization Organisations in 177 ISO member states can now adopt Classic McEliece to remain secure from attack by both classical and quantum computers Governments including Germany and the Netherlands already recommend the highly secure Classic McEliece algorithm due to its unmatched security credentials It’s proven that today’s encryption is vulnerable to attack by a sufficiently mature quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm - a catastrophic event commonly known as Q-Day. Even before such a cryptographically relevant quantum computer emerges it is known that adversaries are stealing encrypted data now, which can be decrypted later - also known as Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL). Google’s recent use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to optimise Shor’s algorithm reduces the number of physical qubits required to break today’s encryption, therefor
Thredd Joins The Visa Agentic Ready Programme, Bringing Agent Network Readiness To Issuers Across Europe, Starting With Zilch15.7.2026 09:00:00 CEST | Press release
Thredd, the AI-first issuer processing platform, today announced it has joined the Visa Agentic Ready programme, enabling issuers across Europe to participate in agent-initiated payments without rebuilding their payments infrastructure. Consumer payments platform Zilch will be among the first issuers on the platform to enable agent-initiated payments for its cardholders. As a processor and enabler, Thredd sits at the trust layer of the payments ecosystem. By joining the programme, Thredd is ready to support Visa and its clients as the market moves into agentic commerce. Agentic commerce introduces a new type of payment initiator: An AI agent acting on a cardholder's behalf. The core payments principles do not change. Cardholder permission, issuer approval, authentication and fraud monitoring all still apply. What changes is how trust is established and enforced at the point an agent transacts. Taking a Zilch customer as an example, a cardholder might ask an AI agent to find a product w
Surgerii Robotics Announces First European Installation of the SHURUI® Single-Port Surgical System at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital15.7.2026 09:00:00 CEST | Press release
Surgerii Robotics today announced the first European installation of its SHURUI Single-Port (SP) Surgical System at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, one of Europe's leading academic medical centers. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260713209503/en/ The first pediatric procedure performed with the SHURUI SP system was a nephroureterectomy on a twelve-year-old boy whose kidney and ureter had become infected and non-functional due to multiple stones. The SHURUI SP system is CE-marked for adult and pediatric use, making it the only CE-marked single-port robotic surgical system currently indicated for pediatric procedures in Europe. The installation marks an important milestone in the international expansion of Surgerii Robotics and the introduction of the technology into a major European reference center. As part of this collaboration, Vall d'Hebron University Hospital has become the first hos
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom