Finnish biochemical company Montinutra announces €2M in pre-A funding led by Metsä Spring

Montinutra, which converts forest industry side streams into high-value bioactive products, has announced a €2 million round led by Espoo-based Metsä Spring, with the participation of syndicate of private investors. The company aims to reach €100 million in annual revenue by 2035.

• Founded in 2018, Montinutra transforms forest industry sidestreams into sustainable, high-value, and natural biochemicals that replace fossil alternatives in the chemical and cosmetics industries. Company’s production process is based on pressurized hot water extraction without the use of any chemicals, and with energy and water recovered back to the process.

“Forest industry sidestreams – such as sawdust, bark, or plywood processing residues – are currently hugely undervalued as raw materials, and are often burned for heat and energy. We enable the broader utilization of hemicellulose and lignin extracts by developing biochemicals out of them. This is how we turn these previously underused sidestreams into mainstream materials and increase the value of the raw material in multiples,”

says Jaakko Pajunen, Managing Director of Montinutra.

• Soon, Montinutra will be newly branded as Boreal Bioproducts. The company claims that the CO2 footprint of its products is small compared to similar fossil-based chemicals. Typical chemicals, such as styrene-butadiene or acrylics used in binder applications, have a fossil CO2 footprint of up to 5 600 kg CO2e / ton.
• For the cosmetic industry, Boreal Bioproducts offers multiple cosmetic functionalities for film forming, natural colour, SPF-boosting, dispersant, and co-emulsifying uses, as well as active ingredients for skin care.

• Metsä Spring, a corporate venture unit of Finnish Metsä Group, led this investment. Metsä Group’s annual sales amount is €7 billion and the team has around 9,500 employees in 30 countries. In August 2023, Metsä Spring led €360,000 round for Swedish biotech Adsorbi.

• With the funding, Montinutra will accelerate its internationalization, advance the designing of the industrial demo production plant. The planned location for the new plant is at the site of Metsä Group’s sawmill in Vilppula, Finland.
• The company also aims to reach €100 million in annual revenue by 2035, with the demo plant up and running by 2026.