Swedish startup to build pilot plant for wood-based material that purifies the air

Swedish startup Adsorbi has secured €1mn to ramp up production of a cellulose-based material that sucks up pollutants from the air. 

Metsä Spring, the venture arm of the Finnish forestry giant, led the funding round alongside Chalmers Ventures and Jovitech Invest.

“We are planning to launch the pilot plant in June and we will be equipped to meet our customer demands while maintaining consistent quality,” Hanna Johansson, CEO of Adsorbi, told TNW via email. The facility will have an expected capacity of 100 tonnes per year.

Johansson co-founded Adsorbi in 2022 alongside Christian Löfvendahl, Romain Bordes, and Kinga Grenda. The team spun out the company from materials research at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg.  

Bordes and Grenda, the chief researchers, originally wanted to develop new ways to protect works of art from harmful pollution. But in the process, they discovered a way to turn cellulose from Sweden’s ...