Sustainable Packaging
Industry Experts discuss all the new materials and ways that packaging can be more sustainable and how we can do our parts to help recycle and reuse. Sustainable Packaging is and will continue to affect us all in our daily lives. We have lots of fun and get down to the real data of what's working to help our planet!
Sustainable Packaging
Investing in Sustainability / Fredric Petit -Partner Emerald Technology Ventures
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredric-petit/
https://emerald.vc/
How can we choose the right sustainable packaging tech to invest in?
What will Fredric Petit and team be speaking about at Packaging Europe?
What is the future of sustainable packaging?
Meet us at Packaging Europe next week
https://www.packagingsummit.earth/amsterdam2023/3272216?i=mnnjoaicRm7XpOiEVYlsG0SAAsZU-8V_
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/packaging-today-show/id1656906367
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Packaging Today Podcast
https://open.spotify.com/show/6dksVwqEFVDWdggd27fyFF?si=e924995740f94e19
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/
I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.
This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.
Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Mr. Frederic Petit, the partner in Emerald Technology Ventures. How
Frederic Petit:are you, sir? I'm doing very fine. Pleased to be with you,
Cory Connors:Corey, today. Oh, it's my honor. where are you in the world
Frederic Petit:today? Today I'm calling you for my home office in the Netherlands. Last week, I was in Zurich, which is company headquarter next to the offices we have in Toronto and Singapore.
Cory Connors:Well, that's exciting. really looking forward to learning more about that, but let's start a little bit with your background. Can you tell us, what got you into this line of work?
Frederic Petit:Yeah, well, I'm an, I'm a chemist by education. I worked, 24 years with a Dutch multinational called DSM. there various roles. Back in 2010, I was appointed sustainability director. That was a time when we didn't even know how to write the word sustainability , and it was my objective to see how can you apply sustainability as a business growth driver? And that has been my passion ever since. So later on, I combined it with an innovation role and all the innovation programs you do in an organization are directly or indirectly related to sustainability. And when you do innovation, there's only so much you can do with your own brilliant scientists and engineers. You also need to look what's happening outside, what's happening at these startups. So we got more exposed to open innovation, to corporate venture capital. When the company moved away from the material sciences business where I was at and thought that life sciences was more exciting. I left and I joined a startup. I was the CEO of a startup. So I moved from a large multinational to a very small startup. And all of a sudden you're on your own developing the strategy, finding your partners. Finding capital, who is willing to invest in a startup? How do you go about those things? and now since two and a half years, I am with Emerald. and basically I'm there leveraging my corporate experience, my startup experience, and Emerald was launching a new fund, fully focusing on sustainable packaging innovations. Wonderful.
Cory Connors:That sounds like a exciting background. And I totally agree with you. sustainability is critical in all aspects of business, especially packaging. but that's exciting to learn about your background. and like you said, you're in the Netherlands and we'll be heading over there soon. November 11th, or, I think the event is the 14th and 15th for Packaging Europe. Yep. and you'll be speaking there. is that correct? Yes,
Frederic Petit:I will be on a panel, together with a corporate, one of our investors, Biosdorf, and together with a startup, Deepoli. So we will unveil some secrets about open innovation. What is open innovation? Why is it important? And how do you go about opening a vision?
Cory Connors:Well, that's exciting. I can't wait to hear that. this is one of the few, events where you will actually be able to hear all speakers, because, the way that Tim, arranged the schedule, they're not, in different rooms. So I'm excited to be able to hear. your panel. so I very much look forward to that. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about how venture capital can help, people innovate in sustainable packaging. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Frederic Petit:Yeah. So Emerald Technology Ventures has been around for more than 20 years, investing in clean tech, green tech, climate tech. Whatever terminology you prefer. And what sets Emerald apart is that we work mainly with corporates. So we hardly work with pension funds or banks. We work with corporates that like in my previous role, want to have a better understanding on what's happening out there and what are startups developing as new materials, new technologies, digital solutions. So we help them as open innovation partner. So we have a team of more than 50 people, many of them with a technical background, often even a PhD, to whom we refer as sector specialists, because they really understand their sector. And they also can go deep in really understanding what are the Business challenges of the corporates. If they say I'm looking for more sustainable packaging, we say, well, that's not good enough. We need to go three levels deeper to really understand how we can support the corporate with the right startups. And when we like the startup, then we can bring in our finance specialists and also consider to take a minority equity position. So we have the open innovation role. Of matchmaking between corporates and relevant startups that the corporate should know about collaborate with or potentially invest in and then as venture capital firm, we have the possibility to invest in the startups and support them to realize their full growth potential and then help them also hopefully within profitable exit.
Cory Connors:I think this is so critical to the future of sustainability, and especially in, like I said, in packaging, we need to have the money there to, allow for the innovation, and the funding, this is not an inexpensive process to learn and to test and to try new things and to fail and to, really innovate, not just, not just adapt, but really make some very significant changes. I'd love to know what you're excited about, in regards to Packaging Europe's event coming up here soon. What are you looking forward to?
Frederic Petit:Well, I'm looking forward to, to meet some friends, to Leverage my current network to see how my friends are doing, what's keeping them busy, make new friends. And when I talk about new friends, it's Either on the corporate side. So there are many corporates there, which I like a lot, but also at a startup side. what are the new startups doing? There has been never a higher number of startups active in the packaging space than these days. a couple of years ago when you were said, I'm a CEO founder of a packaging startup. Nobody was taking you serious. You had to do something as a service, preferably digital, but because of all the recent trends, which is. Customer demands, regulatory drivers, commitments from brand owners. There has never been more activity in packaging innovation than today. So I'm looking forward to hear more about the new innovations. I like to understand better what are the business challenges of the corporates, connect with the people, and also with some fellow, venture capital firms that might be present to hear from them, how they see the space and potentially do a deal together. Oh, wow.
Cory Connors:So that's possible that you could team up with other venture capitalists.
Frederic Petit:We, we, we, we often team up as Emerald. we often lead a deal. so we, we are the prime partner of the, of the startup, but it doesn't mean that we always take the full ticket if you like, so we have this network of more than 50 partners at Emerald. Partners from all over the world. So these are the partners that have invested in one of our funds. They often have an appetite when we like the deal. They say, well, Emerald with your sector expertise, if you really believe this is a good startup, we're happy to go along with you and also go invest, but we also have a broader network. So when we talk to our startups, we can take larger tickets, which will not fully invested. By Emerald, but also with our ecosystem partners,
Cory Connors:that sounds like a great system and a great way to help each other and help the environment, improve the sustainable packaging that's around. very exciting. do you have a, an example of maybe a success story of a product that, or company that you've invested in that's grown, that you want to talk about or anything in the future that you're looking forward to?
Frederic Petit:One example that I can give is the company Genesis from Canada Genesis biotech, where we have recently invested in. they have developed a new technology, a new process to get to polyhydroxyalkanoids. While PHAs are not new. to the industry. but they always come with some challenges. that's the performance challenge. It's the cost challenge and it is the footprint challenge. So where do you make it from? How do you make it? what process? And what Genesis has been able to do is develop and bolt on technology, for example, for biogas. They can take out the fatty acid and convert 'em to phh. And with that technology, they also can focus on the higher end, phh, which are the pH bvs. So these are the more performing. And with this technology, we believe they have addressed the performance challenge of the phs, the cost challenge, and the food challenge. So, we are a proud investor in that, in that company and would like to see them, grow and become more successful in the future.
Cory Connors:Wonderful. Bio, technology is really advancing fast, and it's fun to watch. It's really exciting to see that happen. is that a lot of the focus for your company is, the substrates and how they're manufactured?
Frederic Petit:It's one of the angles. So when we define our investment thesis, if you like, one end is the material angle. So how can we get to lower footprint raw materials, which means that we have to move away from fossil based plastics to recycle plastics, mechanically recycled, chemically recycled, we can go to bio based plastics, or we can go to fiber based. So that's the whole discussion about paper replacing plastics in some of the, the applications. Then the other angle there is the functionality. So if you look into paper packaging, everybody loves paper packaging, especially the end users love paper packaging. But paper packaging comes with its challenges. it's the strength, it's the water resistance, it's the barrier properties. So you need new innovations, how you can improve the functionality of the packaging. And then you have the whole concept, which again is a material concept about design for reuse or for refill or for end of life. And there you also need to take into account what kind of labels do you use, what kind of adhesive do you use, what kind of printing inks do you use. And today all of a sudden we talk about delamination and debolding and de inking, which were topics that were not discussed a couple of years ago. Nobody was aware of what you were talking about. And the other angle is the digital industrial IT angle. So that's much more about waste analytics and waste sorting. A lot of waste is there, but today it's too expensive and too complicated to sort out all the waste, to recognize the waste. So you can have on pack solutions and off pack solutions, artificial intelligence, computer vision, these kinds of startups, a lot of activity there. It's the whole concept of connected packaging, smart packaging, intelligent packaging, active packaging, which is not so much a material play, but also an IT play. And then it's the whole digital component related to new business models. So if you want to return and refill and reuse, how do you know where your product is, what it's made from, how you can reuse it. And this of course has seen a massive increase. Also during the pandemic, because we were ordering much more, at home. So it's new business models like direct to customers, product as a service, packaging as a service. So it's a material play and it's a digital IT play. Exactly.
Cory Connors:That's it. we need to look at all aspects of packaging. I'm very excited about reusable packaging. Is that something that, that your companies are investing in as well? Sounds
Frederic Petit:like. Yeah. We're, we are looking a lot into, into reusable packaging. we see there's a lot of attention also with the upcoming regulations. About the reuse. there's a lot of startup activity. we did not yet make an investment there, but we come, continue to keep a close eye on what's going on there. and I said, next to just making the investments, we also are the, The partners of the corporate. So we happy to make the introductions between those startups in the reuse and the refill space and the corporates that, that have been strong interest in here.
Cory Connors:Are, do you feel like, consumers where you live are willing to bring packaging back to the store? Is that something that the, that people will would do?
Frederic Petit:Well, What they do today is because we have deposit schemes. So they do bring back their packaging because there's a financial incentive. And now also we have it on the cans. So not only on the one liter bottles, also on the smaller bottles and also on the cans. And so there is an incentive. And even if I am, as a consumer might not be interested, there are others for which is a financial incentive. If you look at the refill itself, so bringing your own. Empty packaging to the retail that's still in conflict with convenience. And the consumers today still prefer convenience over reuse and refill. but here is also the big question. So when and how will there be a tipping point? So as a retailer, as a brand owner, as a packaging producer, you should have the solutions available. In house, because you do not know exactly when there is that tipping point, but when the tipping point is happening, and at that point, you need to start developing solutions, you will be too late. Well
Cory Connors:said. Very true. We need to be ready for the concept, for the people to be ready for the concept. So you have to develop. The concept in advance of the social shift, or a legal shift, like you mentioned, there are incentives, financial incentives, to bring back packaging. That's very good point. Excellent. I would love to know, shifting gears a little bit, this will be my first time in Amsterdam. Do you have any tips or. Places that we must visit while we're there. Well, the,
Frederic Petit:the location is brilliant. it's very close to the central station and also not too far out of this airport. It's a beautiful location. So first be there. and, and the Netherlands would like to walk a lot and I would not recommend renting a car in Amsterdam. That's not needed. but from there you will be able to walk downtown. Enjoy the canals, enjoy Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a very vibrant city. it's an, it's a very liberal city and it attracts many tourists. So definitely for the visitors to the event, I would recommend them either to book one day in addition, they have sufficient time to also explore and enjoy the
Cory Connors:city of Amsterdam. Thank you. Great advice. We do plan to, I'm actually bringing my wife. We plan to, visit in advance and stay a few days after, but, want to get the full experience. And like you said, it sounds, I've all I've heard is how beautiful it is. and how it's probably going to rain, but, we're used to that here being from Oregon, that rains here a lot too. So not a problem for us. Anything else that you wanted to tell the people about, your company or about, sustainable packaging? No,
Frederic Petit:but, I think we just, we touched upon the most important, topics, and a shout out from two corporates from the full packaging value circle. So whether you are a raw material producer, you are a converter, you are an adjacent industry, like an adhesive label printing manufacturer, you are a brand owner. a retailer, a waste management company, a recycler. We are your partner to drive open innovation and to connect you with the right startups. And if you are in a startup looking for funding, looking for corporate partners, because startups do not only need capital, they also need support. Well, we have more than 20 years of support, of experience supporting startups, and startups need big friends. So they need these corporates as a supplier, as a customer, as a manufacturing partner, potentially as a joint development partner for a research project. So if you are a corporate in the packaging circle, if you are a startup in a material space in the industrial IT space, please reach out. Happy to have a conversation either in Amsterdam. And if you're not able to make it to Amsterdam, please reach out via LinkedIn or directly. I think Corey, I'm not sure how you're going to communicate some kind of contact details.
Cory Connors:Yeah, I'll put them in the show notes. So I'll put your LinkedIn, link and a website. If you prefer. Yep. Yeah. Yep.
Frederic Petit:And email address. No problem.
Cory Connors:Yep.
Frederic Petit:Great. Well, thank you. In a discussion with a corporate, with a startup, or if you are an order investor and you have a deal, but you believe is worthwhile for us to have a look at these engage,
Cory Connors:this is an important part of the future of sustainable packaging. We, we must have the funding. So I was really excited to have you on and talk about this. So thank you, Frederick. I really appreciate your wisdom.
Frederic Petit:Thanks for the opportunity, Cory. Really enjoyed it. Thank you, sir.
