OUR STORY
We’re a young and talented group of entrepreneurs and biotechnologists with a groundbreaking idea designed to contribute towards a better tomorrow.
Our journey begins...
After seeing the extent of single-use medical plastic waste whilst on placement in the NHS, our CEO Olivia founded SymbioTex. She discovered that every year in the UK alone 73 million inhalers are distributed and only 0.5% ever get recycled.
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Teaming up with CSO Mattia helped Olivia to forge a solution for this global problem. Mattia grew up in Italy and would spend his summers on the Italian coastline where he would see tonnes of washed-up seaweed being discarded as waste. He set about exploring the ability to turn this wonderful resource into a valuable material!
SymbioTex uses seaweed – a renewable material source which sequesters carbon as it grows. Unlike bioplastics, SymbioTex’s material is truly home compostable, creates no harmful products upon disposal and does not compete with land used for crops.
The production process also requires little energy, (-95°C) compared to petroleum-based plastics or existing bioplastics that often require temperatures of 170°C+.
Olivia is an experienced project manager with experience in effective stakeholder engagement. She truly dedicates herself to creating a positive impact in her local community and the wider society.
She recently won the Verzion & Unloc Young Entrepreneurs Challenge 2023 and spoke at the Global Research and Innovation in Plastics Sustainability Conference on sustainable plastics in healthcare with Innovate UK KTN.
Olivia has been shortlisted for both 'Female Innovator of the Year' & 'Young Innovator of the Year' award at The Innovation Awards.
Our CSO Mattia is an experienced researcher in biomaterials and biotechnology focused on biomaterial formulation, algal biotechnology and bioprocess engineering. He is currently completing his PhD in biomaterials engineering during which he has secured grants from organisations including Algae UK, BBSRC and Innovate UK.
Mattia is the first author of four high impact factor papers and two patents. Mattia was a finalist in the Next Generation Sustainable Solutions KTN Materials Research alongside the Royal Society of Chemistry Enabling Technologies Competition and has been shortlisted for the ‘Sustainable Innovator of the Year' award at The Innovation Awards.
"We are unique to other biomaterials companies who find a simple but short term solution to the single-use plastic problem.
We want to ensure we use a sustainable material (carbon neutral or carbon negative) which can be cultivated rather than wild harvested, which can be processed mildly (with low environmental/resource impact), which is biodegradable, but more than that, is also home compostable.
Although we set out to disrupt the medical sector, our material can be a sustainable plug-and-play solution to many rigid plastics such as cosmetic pots and packaging, clothing hang tags, lipstick casings and many other applications!"
Olivia Simpson, SymbioTex CEO
SymbioTex has established partnerships with many organisations.
So far we have secured £100,000 in non-equity grants including Innovate UK transformational technologies. We have won London Tech Week 2023 Elevating Founders and Verizon & Unloc Young Entrepreneur Challenge 2023.
We have partnered with the University of Bath, University of Birmingham, University of Wolverhampton, AHSN, Medilink, Set Squared and Royce.
