Primo Climate invests in Krillmat, the Italian startup that transforms food by-products into biomaterials as alternatives to plastic.
As of 12 August, the European regulation on packaging and packaging waste, better known as Ppwr, has come into effect. Among its objectives is making all packaging placed on the European market recyclable by 2030, pushing companies to rethink not only the quantity and format, but also the materials used. Furthermore, the regulation drives a reduction in the use of virgin plastic, including through mandatory minimum percentages of recycled content.
So what is to be done? For a start, alternatives to plastic can be developed. Equally versatile, durable and lightweight, but infinitely less harmful to the environment. Such as ReKrill Recyclable, a new 100 per cent bio-based polymer designed to be recycled within conventional plastic streams, conceived to be fully compliant with the Ppwr. This is the latest innovation developed by Italian startup Krillmat, which has secured the support and confidence of Primo Climate, the first Italian venture capital fund focused exclusively on climate tech.
For Krillmat, the starting point is food by-products, such as seeds, peels and shells — the very same that are still, wrongly, labelled as waste. Once collected and dried — to remove moisture — the by-products are ground into a fine, homogeneous powder. This is then blended with a bio-based polymer matrix through a compounding process, i.e. an extrusion process that integrates the plant-based component into a plastic material of renewable origin, conferring upon it the necessary mechanical and functional properties. From there, small granules known as pellets are obtained, which can be used directly in injection moulding or transformed into a continuous filament for 3D printing. The result is ReKrill, a proprietary technological system with which the company develops several families of biomaterials.
They are certainly not the only biomaterials available on the market, but they have a distinctive feature that sets them apart from others. "Very often in bio-based plastics the so-called filler — that is, shells, peels and by-products — makes up a very small percentage of the total. With Krillmat it ranges from 50 to 80 per cent, with formulations tailored to the final application: which means that fossil fuels are genuinely being replaced," explains Simone Molteni, scientific director of LifeGate and general partner of Primo Climate alongside Giusy Cannone and Ezio Ravaccia.
The latest addition is ReKrill Recyclable, a 100 per cent bio-based polymer that, rather than requiring a separate composting pathway, has been designed to enter conventional plastic recycling streams. The material can be processed using technologies already widespread in the industry, including extrusion, injection moulding, rotational moulding and blow moulding, and is approved for food contact in the European Union, the United States, Canada and Asia. Krillmat is proposing it for applications in packaging, food, cosmetics and consumer products, and will officially present it at Luxe Pack Monaco 2026.
Primo Capital itself, through the Primo Climate fund, is one of the investors involved in the investment round of 6 million euros that Krillmat closed in February 2025. Algebris Investments and Crédit Agricole Italia also took part in the operation, which was partially financed by the European Next Generation EU fund. Today Krillmat already has an installed production capacity of approximately 4,000 tonnes per year, spanning standard grades and custom formulations for industrial applications. With this capital, it will be able to build a new facility, expanding production capacity and its presence in foreign markets — a need that Primo Capital understands well, having specialised precisely in high-growth-potential technology companies.
"The technologies we select solve an environmental problem — in this case, the use of plastic — while at the same time offering great opportunities to businesses," Simone Molteni continues. Krillmat drastically reduces dependence on fossil fuels and complies with the SUP directive on single-use plastics. And it does so with materials that, in addition to having technical properties comparable to those of plastic, allow for colouring (not at all common for a bio-based plastic), are pleasant to the touch and can retain the aroma of the raw material, such as orange or coffee — characteristics that are interesting from a marketing perspective. It is no coincidence that one of the sectors in which it is finding application is cosmetic packaging, where chromatic uniformity, surface finish and stability over time are decisive factors.
"The first thing we verified was that these materials were compatible with the production processes that currently use plastic. This is essential for us: a bio-based solution that forces you to overhaul the supply chain and change machinery would be a non-starter," Molteni clarifies. This is not the case here, given that the material has been designed to work with technologies already in use, ensuring process stability and consistent quality from batch to batch even at high volumes. This is demonstrated by the fact that companies of the calibre of Autogrill, Sanpellegrino and the Comune di Milano have already tested ReKrill. "With Primo Capital we seek out technologies that can truly be adopted at scale, changing the way entire industrial sectors operate," Molteni concludes.
