As a schoolboy, Ukrainian inventor Valentyn Frechka developed a technology for turning fallen leaves into paper in his native village of Sokyrnytsia in Zakarpattia. Later, it formed the basis of the business of Releaf Paper, which Valentyn founded in 2021 with other partners. The eco-friendly startup immediately attracted a lot of attention, received a grant from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and in December 2022, a €2.5 million grant from the EU to build a factory. We decided to ask Valentyn Frechka about the technology of producing paper from fallen leaves, whether he managed to choose a location and start building the factory, and about competition in this market.
How did you come up with the idea of recycling fallen leaves into eco-paper?
It all started with the development of a school project to participate in a research competition from the Minor Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, of which I was a member from 2014 to 2018. This was my last opportunity to express myself on the national or even international stage, so I was quite careful in choosing the research direction and topic, and it was important to me that the idea was new, scalable, interesting, and had clear application.
Since I have been surrounded by nature since childhood, I have been thinking about rationalizing the use of natural resources, which are not exhaustible and are renewed every year. Therefore, I often thought about the production of building materials from plant waste or paper, which is why I settled on this idea, because it seemed clearer to me. At first, I wanted to work on the technology of using straw and flax (straw produces short fibers and flax long). However, there was no key element of novelty, because someone had already worked on such projects.
But even so, I continued to study this topic and found different methods and approaches while working on this raw material, which gave me an understanding of how different raw materials behave under different conditions. I studied the anatomy of raw materials, fiber anatomy, fiber rheology, and logically came to the conclusion that pulp for paper can be produced from any plant organics, and started trying municipal waste, namely grass/hay, flowers, branches and leaves. I chose leaves because, in addition to the results obtained, it was a new direction, and the fibers met the physical and mechanical requirements for papermaking (length, width, etc.).
That's where the story began, the intersection of a goal, the search for ways to achieve it, and the work. However, at the time I was only interested in the scientific component, which I am still working on today at the French Institute of Bioprocessing and Paper in Grenoble with leading European scientists, as this idea inspired them to make other discoveries that will become known later.
How long did it take to develop the technology? What is its uniqueness?
I started working on researching use cases and literature in March 2017. It was important to understand what technologies are available, which ones are only laboratory-based, and which ones are already in mass use. Accordingly, I was interested in the latter.
I started conducting my first experiments in August 2017, and by November 2017, I received the first grams of purified oak leaf pulp. Actually, having identified the main direction of leaf processing for myself, I just continued to improve it, and this improvement consisted of storing leaves all year round, cleaning them from sand and stones and other contaminants, treating and recovering water, etc.
As of September 2018, I changed the concept and moved from the laboratory to the experimental pilot area where I worked on developing a method of processing leaves without cooking and using solvents, and as of 2019, the technology was ready, which formed the basis of the patent, which actually passed all 3 criteria for evaluation by independent experts at the European Patent Office.
We currently have four leaf processing methods that yield four different products for paper producers, of which one is commercialized and the others are in pilot.
In addition, we are still conducting fundamental research into the use of leaf processing by-products and the lignocellulosic product itself as a source of nanocellulose.
If you search the Internet, you can find a whole bunch of instructions on Reddit, YouTube, and other platforms on how to make paper from fallen leaves. However, Releaf Paper is the only company that is trying to do this on an industrial level. Why do you think there is no competition in this niche?
If we're talking about hobbyists, of course, within the confines of a home kitchen or laboratory, anyone can take any raw material and, following DIY instructions from Reddit, YouTube, and other platforms, can replicate it, and the same can be done with the development of rockets or drones or cars. However, each of these developments has a unique level of technology that needs to be mastered, and we were the first to develop this level of technology, which allowed us to process leaves on a large scale.
At the Releaf Paper startup, we as a team are concerned about how we will store the leaves, how we will clean them, how we will get a commercial fiber yield with the right physical and mechanical properties, how we will recover heat and water, and so on. This all requires the development of an entire infrastructure that makes no sense for companies that have been processing wood for hundreds of years and have everything working. It's the same with sugar cane, bamboo, or straw, a group of people have been building the technology and infrastructure for years to get to the level of commercialization.
We are not the first to try to work with leaves, but we are the first to achieve results at the right time and with the right set of knowledge. Our predecessors did not have the technology to collect leaves and compress and deaerate the material to collect a year's worth of raw materials from cities, nor did our predecessors have the knowledge of twin extrusion and steam explosion under controlled conditions. And our predecessors did not have the most important thing - the demand from the market, which appeared after the Covid-19 pandemic and is gaining momentum.
This is what creates a competitive environment, but it is not measured by raw materials, but by volumes: those who can produce more functional fiber at no higher cost than wood pulp have a competitive advantage in the main market share, while everyone else has to find their own niche and penetrate the market.
We are currently at the stage of market penetration with grass, straw, and certain groups of agricultural waste, which are young projects like us.
Releaf Paper has won several awards for environmental startups, and you recently became a finalist for the European Inventor Award 2024. In your opinion, is there still a strong trend towards sustainability in the world? Can the same be said about Ukraine?
So far, all studies of customer behavior show that for several years there has been an increase in customer demand for eco-friendly packaging and it looks like a trend. My personal opinion is that I can't call it a "trend", it's more about the sustainability revolution. Just as we are now in the transition phase to the 4th industrial revolution, so is the sustainability revolution, the transition from using fossil and non-renewable fuels, changing plastic to paper, changing wood paper to alternative paper.
As the purchasing power of individuals grows, so does the impact on the environment, which creates a demand for the development of sustainable technologies to make consumption more responsible. For example, when it comes to paper, we as a company produce the basis for paper - fiber - and paper is already a derivative from which packaging is created. The transition from plastic to paper has put a heavy burden on the forestry industry, companies do not have time to grow commercial eucalyptus, so they have to cut down rainforests to keep gigafactories, for example, in Brazil profitable. Also, such companies are under pressure from regulators who are forcing them to look for alternative solutions, such as fibers from leaves, grass, straw, etc.
All our awards are the results of evaluation or recognition of our quiet work on the project. Most of the time, we receive news about awards very unexpectedly. However, this is not so much related to sustainability as to the level of adoption of our technology and the pace we have compared to others, which allows us to maintain our sustainability.
As for Ukraine, the trend towards sustainable products, which are mostly more expensive, is not very evident, particularly in the paper sector, as it is not a country with a strong pulp and paper industry. Yes, we have a few functional factories with export potential, but in terms of quality and footprint, such products are inferior to paper from Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, or France. Ukraine also has a strong dependence on raw materials: 100% of primary pulp is imported. Before the full-scale invasion, a significant part of it was imported from Russia, which allowed us to be competitive, but after the invasion, we had to switch to Finnish or American pulp, which became unprofitable, so most mills work on waste paper, the collection of which in Ukraine is limited to such volumes as the total demand of all mills, so again there is a dependence on imports, which carries serious CO2 emissions.
Nevertheless, we continue to produce paper with some contractors, thus enlightening both producers and consumers.
What I can say with 100% certainty is that Ukraine is a potential pulp country that can produce significant volumes of pulp from leaves and agricultural waste for the Middle East and Central European markets, which is actually our plan when the opportunity arises.
In 2022, you received a €2.5 million grant from the EU to build a pilot production line, and you considered locations in France, Finland, and Ukraine. Did you manage to decide on a location and start building the factory?
Yes, we, together with Oleksandr Sobolenko, co-founder of Releaf Paper, chose France for a number of reasons, including the fact that our first clients were companies from France, and local business relocation organizations from other countries were actively responding to help us compared to other countries (later, the Netherlands and Germany changed their minds and began to actively invite us).
Also, France is one of the most sustainable countries in Europe, where it is easy to introduce alternatives to plastic or wood paper.
The combination of these factors allows us to feel comfortable here. We are currently in the active phase of installing processing equipment in the municipality of Le Mureaux in the Ile-de-France region. Leaves will be supplied from several districts of Paris and the surrounding area by a local partner that collects urban green waste.
Also, within this pilot production line, we are going to test different types of pulp processing for 4 product categories: linerboard and fluting, baseboard, thick board and molding fibers.
In 2021, Forbes wrote that you turned down METRO, Silpo, Good Wine, and foreign buyers who were ready to buy your bags due to a lack of capacity. Have you managed to increase paper production?
Yes, at that time, we had a number of limiting factors that would not allow us to produce paper in such volumes, which prompted us to increase our production capacity. Now we have resumed negotiations and will try to resume cooperation on a pilot basis. Currently, based on the outsourcing model, we are able to produce up to 10,000 tons of products per year, but more and more actively, we are diving into our original strategy and developing it.
Our core business is the production of pulp as a raw material for paper. All communication about the production of paper is related exclusively to the fact that the consumer understands what paper is, not pulp. Therefore, we have to communicate the idea of sustainable paper made from fallen leaves through final products: boxes, bags, wrapping paper, etc. In this way, the customer understands what it is and that it does not require changes in their existing supply chain, and they go back to their packaging manufacturer, and they go back to the paper manufacturer, and they go back to us, which allows us to sell the fibers for the production of such paper.
Releaf Paper products can now be bought directly through the company's website, how successful is this case? Are you satisfied with the volume of orders?
In fact, we created the opportunity to buy fallen leaf products through the online store due to active requests for samples. Companies, people, organizations, even global banks make hundreds of requests a month to receive and test products.
We can't afford to spend money on distributing free samples with free logistics, so we created this store as a solution. Anyone can buy the desired product and evaluate the quality, architecture, durability and printing properties, as well as receive a technical letter with supporting documents upon request, for the final decision on cooperation, where the subject of cooperation is already large volumes of supply of leaf paper or leaf paper products.
For this to work once the store is open, there needs to be a different approach, team and marketing, because our goal now is to introduce the market to the products and get consumers to buy pulp, which is a very effective and profitable strategy.
How serious do you think the competition from biodegradable bag manufacturers is?
Of course, within the global packaging market, we compete as manufacturers of products for packaging a certain group of goods, but this is not direct competition, as the requirements for us and them are different, as is the concept of the solution itself.
However, when assessing competitive advantages, paper has more advantages over biodegradable packaging because it is recyclable and can also behave like ordinary organic matter in the environment, degrading into simple compounds, unlike bio-plastic, which requires appropriate decomposition conditions, Also, not all types of biodegradable plastic can be recycled, so I don't see the point, based on the concept of circular economy, of producing something eco-friendly, which requires a number of resources to create, and at the end of its life, there is not always a rational, easy solution for its disposal.
We compete with producers of wood and alternative pulp, where there is already a set of factors that companies either pass or fail, including strength, fiber structure, price, carbon footprint, etc.
Has Releaf Paper managed to become profitable?
As a startup company, we are at the stage of active market entry, and our goal is to stabilize our position, which will allow us to make a profit. We are also at the stage of preparing to launch a new and powerful pilot production complex, and we are actively using the budget rather than replenishing it, but all indicators point to reaching profitability in 2025.
What are your plans for the near future, do you plan to launch new products?
We are actively working on the launch of the current pilot production line, where we will be able to produce raw materials for the production of paper of various commercial groups. We are also actively focusing on molding fibers, where a number of opportunities are also open.
After that, we will expand to other EU countries, where we will process not only leaves but also other agricultural waste, in particular, we have received such requests from the Netherlands and Germany.
A separate category of plans is for the tropical-equatorial region, where the bulk of requests come from companies that grow commercially pineapples, bananas, and oil palms, which together generate up to 1 million tons of biomass rich in long-fiber cellulose.