NaturLoop tests production of Cocoboards® at an industrial scale

NaturLoop wants to produce sustainable building material from coconut fibres. The start-up founded in 2020 is now one step closer to this goal and has tested the production of the so-called Cocoboards® in a factory for the first time. NaturLoop is therefore well on the way to a market launch in the near future. Two further industrial-scale trials are to follow this year, so that Cocoboards® can be produced on a large scale from 2024.

Various challenges in upscaling

“We had to overcome various hurdles in scaling up from laboratory to industrial scale," says Michail Kyriazopoulos, CTO and co-founder of NaturLoop. For example, the team first had to find a factory with the right machinery and figure out how to produce sufficient quantities of the bio-based adhesive they had developed. "Importing coconut shells - our main raw material - from the Philippines is also always a logistical challenge," says Kyriazopoulos, adding, "We are working on expanding the supply chain for coconut shells from the Philippines to meet the demand for production in Europe from 2024." In the long term, NaturLoop wants to establish production facilities in the Philippines so that the raw material can be processed directly where it is currently generated as waste.