Voices that Matter: Shellworks Creates Natural Alternative To Plastic

Shellworks is reinventing cosmetics and wellness packaging with a true drop-in alternative to plastic. Their novel biomaterial, Vivomer, looks and performs like plastic but is fully biodegradable, giving the FMCG market a scalable, low-impact packaging solution.

As Shellworks celebrates its $15M Series A and reaches a critical milestone where Vivomer is cost-comparable to glass or aluminium, we look back at our Red Book – Voices that Matter conversation with Insiya Jafferjee, Co-founder and CEO of Shellworks.

Going from a job in high-volume production within Apple’s manufacturing design team in Cupertino to studying at the Royal College of Art in London, Sri Lankan-born Insiya Jafferjee developed a holistic appreciation for what it takes to make beautiful things. The challenge behind launching her startup Shellworks is to design and manufacture a material that accomplishes such a feat, while having minimal environmental impact.

After meeting co-founder Amir Afshar, the two agreed the best route was to leverage nature in order to create a new, sustainable alternative to plastic. It’s called Vivomer and it is making its way into products at some of the UK’s best-known stores.

The Shellworks CEO says her goal is nothing short of making Vivomer a household name — while leaving little trace of it on Earth.

Q Shellworks has an ambitious mission to come up with a sustainable alternative to plastic that’s both durable and beautiful. How are you planning to go about that?

A When we started the company, me and my co-founder Amir had this thought – wouldn’t it be amazing if you had a solution that could do everything that plastic can do, but when you dispose of it, it would just disappear? That’s what we set up to do with Shellworks, and that’s what our material innovation Vivomer is — a material that’s inherently built by nature so when you return it to its natural environment, it’ll be recognised by those microorganisms and eaten.

What’s a bit of a plot twist, and what people may not realise, is that what they’re growing is a polymer. And so the products we make, you could put in your dishwasher, you could colour it, and you could print on it. You can basically do everything you want with a plastic material.

Q You previously worked at Apple. How did that influence your decision to start a company focused on sustainability?

A At Apple, my experience was mostly in very large-scale manufacturing and operations. That really instilled in me that whatever I do, I want to do on a very large scale because that’s how you make an impact. And so when I met Amir, my co-founder and the one who had this love for natural materials, I wanted to do it so that we shipped billions of units, because I saw that when you do it on such a large scale, you can reach so many more people. And for context, Coca-Cola alone ships 600 billion units. Also my time at Apple showed me the how. It didn’t feel daunting. It didn’t feel scary.

Q Where are you on the path right now? You’ve created Vivomer. How far along are you with scaling that?

A I think it’s probably at the best inflection point right now. By the end of the year, we’ll ship about 3 million units and we’re setting ourselves up to do almost five times that next year, if not more. Our product can be found in Tesco, Boots, Holland & Barrett, and in the US you’ll find them in Whole Foods as well. It’s no longer niche. It’s very scalable, very mass-market and accessible.

Q What sort of products is Vivomer in at present?

A We started by addressing packaging. Right now we do everything from beauty to personal care and cleaning. More recently, we’ve added wellness. Things like supplements and nutrition.

Q Okay. Can you tell me who your customers are?

A Probably one of the bigger ones is a brand called Wild Cosmetics. They just got bought by Unilever, so we’re integrating into that ecosystem.

We have other ones that are in the beauty space.

Q What’s the next challenge for you?

A We need more customers to do it with us at scale, and that’s counter to the way bigger customers typically operate when it comes to new technology.

They’re a bit more risk averse. They want to do a pilot. We always say if we do five to 10 million products, we can serve you better than if we do 50,000 units. It’s a tactical change in how people are used to bringing new technologies to market, because of the kind of problem that we’re solving.

Q What is it you’re doing that hasn’t been done by other companies before?

A Two key things. The first is the manufacturing piece. That’s where the cost comes from. If you have a new material, it’s amazing that you can have all these properties, but if you can’t manufacture it at scale, you’re not going to reach the masses. People also want to know how this product can break down in a marine environment and soil environment. What happens in landfill? Recycling? What about microplastics? How do you verify this? And these tests don’t exist. So what we’ve had to do is work with labs to build the testing infrastructure. And as you can imagine, large labs don’t move at pace. So it’s, how do you do this but still fit into a fundraising venture ecosystem? That’s a huge challenge.

Q Can you tell me how the partnership with LocalGlobe came about?

A LocalGlobe felt like an immediate fit for us. I think they have an appetite to be able to do deep tech ventures that are truly on the cusp of being very viable commercialisation. What I really respected about LocalGlobe is they knew so much about the space. They are not afraid of taking bold bets and things that are pretty disruptive.

Q What does the future look like to you?

A I’m very optimistic. I think the future is to look around a room and see products that are no longer made from plastic, but from Vivomer.

It is inevitable. With this technology, it can do everything that you want plastic to, but it just doesn’t have any of the harm.

Q What is your ultimate goal for Shellworks?

A That we become a household name, like Tetra Pak, like Gore-Tex, like something that you’d recognise, and it’s synonymous with true sustainability, value, but also performance. The goal is that we keep all the convenience of plastic without the negative impact.

shellworks.com