“The year we moved mountains” – Looking back at 2022
This year was one of the most important in Made of Air’s history. We signed meaningful partnerships, opened our R&D facility, and doubled the size of our team. We also did the critical groundwork to deliver our product at scale in 2023.
Over the last 12 months, we reached significant milestones that will set the stage for carbon-negative materials at scale. Our CEO described our year like this:
“2022 did the quiet work of building foundations for scale. The processes, know-how and IP the company has built this year translates to significant impact on our mission to reverse climate change.”
Our achievements in detail:
Opened our R&D facility, Carbon Lab
In our previous post, we described what we do at our R&D facility and why this place is so important to us. In short, it helps us elevate our research to a new level. Early research to product development is carried out at this facility, creating a pipeline of commercial opportunities. Carbon Lab is also the place where we investigate end-of-life scenarios and circularity for our materials. Both of these aspects are crucial to building a product portfolio that performs for the climate.
Created our first product, Prime Flex
Thanks to the work we do at Carbon Lab, we were able to bring our first product to market. Prime Flex is a carbon-negative material made for injection molding. This compound is key to decarbonizing consumer goods and offering a sustainable substitute for fossil-based products. In 2022, we ran extensive trials with our partners to understand how the compound performs in existing production lines. The data from these early trials informed and rapidly optimized our product. Clear successes at the trials confirmed a variety of use cases including a range of different consumer goods. Prime Flex has also been included in Positive Plastics’ Kit 2 of sustainable materials, a significant step for our material’s market entrance.
Signed a partnership with Arktura
Although consumer goods are an important market for MOA, the built environment is where we believe our technology can make the biggest climate impact. Reducing construction emissions and embodied carbon in building products is vital to reaching climate goals. The partnership with Arktura enables one of the world’s leading architectural manufacturers, to join forces with a revolutionary new raw material, to rapidly decarbonize the built environment.
Built a scalable, certified production process
Building capacity is one of the most critical steps in scaling up our production. In 2022, we completed a certified production process with associated permits. We also specified and procured the key equipment needed to initiate production in 2023.
Doubled the size of our team
All the milestones mentioned above require a more specialized team than ever before, and as a result, our team doubled over the past year. Now we’re a group of 25, all highly committed to combating climate change. We introduced new roles to accelerate our path to market and significantly strengthened our research team, who have already delivered novel innovations to change the way materials work.
Won grants and awards
As in previous years, we’ve again been shortlisted in plenty of competitions. Namely, we were named to Norrsken’s Impact100 list and were finalists in the Urban Tech Forward and Hello Tomorrow awards. In September, we won the PropTech Innovation Award, signifying the importance of our material in building and real estate applications. We’ve also been awarded a GRW Grant for our upcoming pilot factory. GRW stands for Joint Task for Improving Regional Economic Structures, and in our case, it's a 40% reimbursement on our newest investment in the Brandenburg region. The grant acknowledges our work on reversing climate change at the highest levels of local and state governments.
A complicated year, with important takeaways
We can’t look back at 2022 without mentioning how difficult this year was globally. A new war in Europe, ongoing repercussions of COVID, and of course, hits to global supply chains have led to production issues and price hikes in many, if not all, industries. One of the most important things we can do to mitigate these issues is to focus on local supply chains. Since the beginning, we’ve been working on a technology that can be implemented anywhere in the world with local feedstocks. This helps us keep transportation emissions down and protects us from current global supply chain problems.
What’s coming in 2023?
We look forward to passing important milestones next year, too. 2023 will see the first sales of Prime Flex, our first continuous production, more work with exciting first-mover customers, more partnerships with built environment manufacturers, and new critical research on biochar in our lab.
Our mission is to reverse climate change. If you are interested in hearing more about how our carbon-negative materials can help products store CO2, get in touch!
