Designing a Better Future with Seaweed: Georgios Gkotsis on Replacing Plastics at Scale

Chris Whyte (: 00:04

Hello and welcome to Why Design. I'm your host, Chris Whyte And today I'm joined by Georgios Gkotsis CTO at Kelpi a Bristol based startup on a mission to replace fossil plastics in packaging with seaweed based coatings. Georgios has built a career at the intersection of material science, engineering and sustainability. He began with a PhD supported by Procter & Gamble, working on synthetic skin to test personal care products before moving to Unilever to tackle the compatibility gap.

between sustainable packaging and product formulations. Since then, he's doubled down on biomaterials, first at Zampler and now at Kelpi, where he leads all things technical from R &D to commercial scale-up. In this episode, we dive into the challenge of replacing hard plastics in long shelf life products, the commercial realities of bringing sustainable materials to market, and how Kelpi's mission-first mindset has shaped its technology and culture. Georgios also reflects

on his own shift from material scientist to CTO and the lessons he's learned about leadership, scale and staying focused on the bigger picture. If you're working in deep tech, materials innovation or just care about solving the plastics problem at scale, this one's packed with insight. So let's get into it.

Chris Whyte (: 01:19

Georgios welcome to the podcast. So yeah, it's wonderful to have you. So I'm going to do my best now to introduce you. This bit's always a little bit cringe, but I'm going to just read through kind of what I've got set the scene. You know, if I get anything wrong, please do dive in. But Georgios, you are the CTO at Kelpi, a Bristol based startup, creating seaweed based coatings to replace fossil plastics in packaging.

You spent your career at the intersection of sustainability, material science and consumer products, starting with a PhD at Procter & Gamble, where you developed methods to assess product performance on synthetic skin, which was your first real exposure to R &D. Spent time at Unilever, tackling the compatibility gap between product formulations and sustainable packaging, before moving to Xampla to explore plant protein-based materials.

oduct market fit. And then in: 2023

Georgios Gkotsis (: 02:12

Bye.

Chris Whyte (: 02:37

Wonderful to have you on the show, Georgios

Georgios Gkotsis (: 02:39

Thank you Chris very

much for having me. you. That was a great dinner by the way. I think I remembered that when I introduced myself.

Chris Whyte (: 02:42

You're very welcome. Yeah.

Well, the great thing about these podcasts is it's all kind of it's all recorded, it's all transcript. So when it goes live, just go and copy and paste. can have that for your LinkedIn profile. So we're to dive into this in a moment. We're to get into your personal journey into sustainable materials. This is going to be, I guess, one of the more technical conversations that we've had so far with Why Design. But I'm really looking forward to this. And we're going to talk about the mission and the growth of Kelpi.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 02:50

I love you.

Yeah.

Hmm.

And nice.

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 03:11

the

technical and commercial challenges of replacing fossil plastics. And we're going to get into some of your reflections on startup leadership and looking forward to what's next. So as we start with every single guest, Georgios, why design or more specifically, what drew you into chemicals and materials, engineering slash design?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 03:15

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. It was a bit random, actually. I was trying to reflect on that the past few days, you know, in a bit of a preparation for this podcast, I was trying to remember what happened about 20 years ago when I decided to go to chemical engineering. OK. And I'm afraid the answer is a bit boring. was it was a bit random. I think it was actually a

Easter time in Greece and one of my uncles visiting for a dinner, he just said, engineering, that sounds good, maybe you should do that. Because he was actually in pharmaceuticals and he was in engineering in general, he was an entrepreneur. And he mentioned that to me.

My family wanted me to be completely free in what I choose, so my mother wanted me to be an artist or something like that because I was good at drawing. But, you know, very random fact. It was my uncle who just said, I have some chemical engineers working for me. They're very smart people. Maybe you should consider chemical engineering.

was extremely lucky to pick that as a subject for my studies because I cannot tell you how much I saw myself in this while I was studying it. I wasn't a massively great student in the university, I was a great student in school, but I could tell that...

I feel like I completely align with the engineering mindset, which engineers will tell you it's all about mass balances and what goes in, what goes out, that's it. It's the logic behind it. And that logic I keep finding myself having in everything I work at at the moment. if it doesn't make sense...

I will not be happy and we wouldn't want to make it make sense. I think that's for me what motivates me, what drives me, how I approach everything. So it's finding the logic behind it and making sure it makes sense for me, for the world, for the market, for whatever it is. So, mean, why design like I... It's a good question because, I guess...

Chris Whyte (: 05:25

Wonderful.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 05:29

there is a definition to be made here about what we consider as design. But for me, when you say design, what I think of is around where science, engineering meet.

the commercial ability of it, and it's the product at end of the day. It's how do you design a product that makes sense. And then my first exposure, my first real exposure to that was not the PhD, was really my work with Unilever, because this is where I really worked with fast moving consumer goods and I understood the power of putting a product and I feel like...

For the first time, this was when my misconception of if something is extremely good, it will sell itself broke down completely because that's not the case. It's not just about performance. It's not just about, you know, how good something is. You need to complement it. You need to fulfill the story and you need to design everything, I guess. So, yeah, that was where I felt, okay, I can bring my logic from chemical engineering to my newly acquired

not wisdom, but revelation that design is quite important in product development. And then I try to work more and more and expose myself more and more to early stage technologies and how we can create a product from scratch. So yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 06:46

Yeah. Brilliant. it's, you know, chemical engineering can be so broad, can't it? You could have ended up going down many paths, but was sustainability, you know, was that always there as a motivation or did that kind of come in later?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 06:49

Yeah. Anything. Yeah.

Thank

ow when I was studying it was: 2006

that period of time. So my chemical engineering department was focusing on maybe three or four platforms of which one was polymer technology, so mostly plastics for multiple applications from biomedical applications to anything else. You have materials, but when we said materials back then it was more about concrete or more about construction materials and so on. You had the computer techie guys, which were brilliant and that was probably the most difficult stream.

You have the environmental one as well, where basically this is where some sustainability came in. And I think the missing one, I believe it was more around bio applications in the pharmaceutical sector, something like that, bio processes, maybe, something like that. So five platforms actually, after all. I chose polymer technology back then because I liked the people, like that's something that...

I always had across my professional career and not like I always go based on people actually rather than the subject itself. Of course, the subject is important. That's why I have stuck with sustainability for so long. But back then I chose this one, this path, and this was my first exposure to polymers and plastics. And back then, as I said, all the...

and horrors around microplastics were not that detected yet. They were not that we didn't know much about it, at least in the university back then we were not talking about it as much. We didn't know. And then I'm having my PhD and during my PhD obviously I worked for Procter & Gamble and University of Birmingham. And that was completely different. It moved away from polymer technologies.

I used my polymeric background to create the synthetic skin that you mentioned that had a similar topography, similar surface energy, flexibility and so on. So it had this element of, you know, my understanding of materials, plastic materials and how they could replicate skin. But even then, this was where I started understanding a little bit like, okay, like sustainability, we need to do something about it. And then Unilever, that was a big change there because Unilever took a lot

Chris Whyte (: 08:56

Mm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 09:17

of pride around being one of the most sustainable, if not the most sustainable, FMCG in the world. And that was when, for the first time, I had actually a target in my objectives as an employee of Unilever around sustainability. And it was to explore new applications and new things there. And funnily enough, this was when...

Chris Whyte (: 09:21

Mm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 09:40

I had four objectives and my manager, he was so nice to me and he told me to basically equally distribute or distribute as, not equally, but to weigh these objectives as I like. So if I want a little bit more of this or more of that, I can change it a little bit.

And I followed his advice and I spent like 95 % of my time in the sustainability one and only 5 % in everything else, which probably should cost me my job. But it worked out really well because I started then playing with some new formulations, some new ways on the product side on how we can create new products from scratch. Forget about the past, forget about what is out there because that's by the way, something that

always brings a lot of limitations. When somebody tries to innovate and they say let's start from something that we have and make it better, that's always very very difficult. It's much more helpful to start from a blank sheet and say okay I innovate from scratch, I forget everything I know and I just have a target, how do I get there? And that helps a lot with my style as well of you know that I mentioned before that I like logic so I'm going to make the things that are very logical. So back then I started

Chris Whyte (: 10:49

Are

there any pitfalls to that approach? Because imagine kind of starting from a blank sheet every time, there's surely a treading over old grounds.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 10:56

Yeah, it's not

for everyone. First of all, that's the first pitfall. Depending on your style, and there is no good and bad style, the fact that I am like that, it doesn't mean that you should be like that. It's not for everyone, that's the first thing to say, which is not a pitfall. The pitfall comes later on, which is about...

scalability and how you're gonna take it from from 0 to 70 percent is different and from 70 percent we're 100 percent ready and I think that this approach might be very good for the you know first prototype the first minimum viable product the first let's do this and but then to make it properly

you know, scaled and ready for the market and so on. That requires a completely different skill set and I feel like this is probably the problem with this approach. If you want something ready for the market, a product that is absolutely perfect from every angle, then yeah, you shouldn't follow this approach. Maybe you you are better off if you take an already ready product and do some incremental changes towards your target. So you want it more sustainable, let's take a plastic bowl

Chris Whyte (: 11:55

Hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 12:05

and make it lighter for example. Or let's take a plastic bottle and replace the content of it with some PCR or something like that. Or know, find other ways to change towards something more sustainable. But my way, which is let's start from scratch, forget about what is being used so far. Yeah, you're gonna end up with a minimum viable product that might need...

a lot of work later on in implementation and how do you scale that and how do you reach massive volumes. So I guess there are benefits in both approaches. One is more around making an impact now and the other one is about making a big disruption and a massive change. yeah, it really depends, I guess.

Chris Whyte (: 12:43

And I'm guessing you're kind of

leaning heavily into that in your current role. But before we get into Kelpi, what were some of the key learnings in that stage of your career at P &G and Unilever that really kind of shaped your path?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 12:57

Mm.

Yeah, So in Procter & Gamble with my PhD, it was my first real understanding of how different the business world is to the academia. And I was lucky enough to this in the form of a fully funded PhD by the industry. So...

A lot of PhDs out there, they finish their PhD and then they're like in the point where they say, do I go and carry on in the university or do I go ahead and jump to the industry, what's best for me and so on. I think that I was like to have this type of PhD because then I had proper exposure to both and I could tell that for me it's very clear that...

At the moment I need to go to the industry because that's what makes sense to me It doesn't mean I'm gonna not gonna be interested in the future to go back to the academia But for now at that point it felt that okay That's the massive learning and the other learning was around the fast-moving consumer goods and companies and then how How great their impact can be

even with small changes. So I felt like with Proc and Gamble I was exposed to their R &D. I understood how you can change things when you have a lot of funding available, a lot of equipment, all the toys, all the ingredients and everything. It was eye-opening of course because this is where you can really, really with a small...

change that you can make in one formulation or in one process down the line you can have a bigger impact simply because of the massive size. And the same thing I then validated in my rolling unilever when I went there

Basically you had everything available to you. So that was the great the great thing about being in such a massive company you you had everything available from Expertise brilliant people that are in the industry for decades And you have the best labs the best ingredients the best, you know, we even had in the port town like we had a hair salon where basically we could bring People in and they can test the products and I remember I had the trial

once or twice with some of my products and I was reading the feedback then of people and was like, wow, that's brilliant. So you know with this, with this everything in you know in your reasonable you know availability and then you can do so many cool stuff and because of the size the potential is massive like if you improve something even by a little bit

that your potential impact in the world is massive. The one that's a positive side, I would say the only negative side, which is negative only for a few people I guess, not for everyone, is how fast things move.

And as everyone knows, like in bigger companies, things might take a little bit longer. So, and everyone is sitting quite far from each other. And what I mean is that I was in R &D, so I was speaking to brands and I was working basically for the brands. And I was innovating new materials and then later on, new packaging and then compatibility between the two. But I was sitting very far from the team that would do the deployment.

to the market and then I would never probably be the one who would actually take the product and put it in the market myself and understand everything else in the in the life cycle of the product. So this sometimes it could be a bit frustrating for people like me who like to see the whole picture and this is when yeah yeah and this was

Chris Whyte (: 16:27

Yeah.

Yeah.

You've got a big disconnect, haven't you?

So yeah,

you've a big disconnect there from kind of the work you're doing and how passionate you are about it versus, then the lack of control really on what happens with that work. once you hand it over, it's like there could be a decision somewhere else in the organization that goes, actually now's not the right time to push this into market. Cause it doesn't make commercial sense or the geopolitics or what, you know, there's lots of different varying factors. So yeah, I can understand that being quite frustrating at certain times.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 16:47

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

And as you say, it could be a perfectly good reason why the product that you worked at for two years doesn't go to the market at the end. But it doesn't stop being a little bit disheartening to feel like that.

I had an example like that because, back to your question on the learnings, I had the good learnings and I had the bad learnings and the bad learnings was exactly that, that we had COVID at some point and a lot of my products probably would not be the priority anymore because for obvious reasons we should focus on hygiene.

Chris Whyte (: 17:39

Yeah, absolutely. And I guess, you you talk a lot about the opportunities within those kind of within FMCG within those big global global behemoths, you know, and the opportunities to make a small difference on a big scale, but then I guess, had some of these these companies, you know, just by the sheer volume of the products that are pumping out, obviously, the court the creating, to a certain extent, big problems.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 17:48

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 18:03

as well as the ones that you're trying to try to solve. So did that ever come into, know, was that even a consideration or kind of play on you at all while you were there?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 18:14

From the inside, I'll be really honest here. Having a lot of great colleagues that were so passionate about sustainability, we were all aware and we all wanted to do the best we could and we always wanted to do better. So because of that and because of that passion, although you are aware that because of the success of the business and its global impact,

As a result, more shampoos people use, the more plastic packaging will exist. So your success is actually also a problem in this sense. But exactly because we're all very passionate, at least in my team and in the R &D over there, and the people that I knew, and all of them wanted to do much better. It didn't feel like, oh my God, what are we doing here? Are we winning the world? It felt like we need to do better. We need to do this. We need to...

improve as much as we can. So yes, you are aware obviously, the more successful the business is, the more impact it's going to have, positive and negative. But you know, the whole ethos and the purpose of the business was always to do better. So that was good.

Chris Whyte (: 19:17

Absolutely, No, that's great. so moving on then, let's talk about Kelpi. You joined in 2023, you mentioned. coming out of the worst parts of COVID, I suppose, how did that opportunity come about?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 19:27

Yeah.

At that point, so I was an example before Gelpe, so it was another startup and this was my first exposure to startups really and it was my first hardcore sustainability let's say, know, and I learned so much, brilliant people there, brilliant team and that was my first exposure to know to startups as well and if you like...

That feeling that I mentioned that I had in Unilever sometimes of this connection with, you know, where the product is, why we are in the R &D like that and how it's gonna be commercial and so on. Over there I had my first exposure to what a startup is and how it feels to understand the whole life cycle of a product. And I love that experience. And then from that then I jumped to Kelpi and with Kelpi I am...

the opportunity arise from, you you're always aware of people who work on similar things. You're always trying to understand what other people are doing in the space. back then I was, really liked how Kelpi approached the sustainability. had this thing where they didn't start with the technology, they started with the idea. So Kelpi has three founders, Neil Murray and Chris.

Neil and Mary serial entrepreneurs and Chris is a professor in the University of Bath chemical engineering and the story says Neil and rushed Chris's office with a pack salmon they dropped the salmon on the desk and said how is it possible that

this salmon is going to be consumed in seven days, but the plastic packaging will stay for us for a thousand years. And we need to do better than that. So they were very much driven by passion. The one thing that they wanted for sure was to use something, to use feed stocks like seaweed. And that is because there are clear benefits in using seaweed in terms of its LCA. It grows so fast.

in the environment like no other plant in the planet. Because it grows in the ocean it doesn't need any fresh water, it doesn't compete with land plants or food or agriculture and it has massive benefits as well for the ocean from oxygenating the ocean, reducing the temperature and capturing so much CO2 in the process of growing. It's very renewable and that's it, that's what they...

That simple narrative is why they wanted to work with something on seaweed. But the technology was not there. And that's why they found Chris to help them with that. Because Chris is a world expert in the field of seaweed materials. And then they hired their first team. They hired Steph, our current CSO. And they started looking at how we can make something that makes sense.

and what I liked about them is that they were quite ambitious with their goals. They went for long shelf life product plastic replacement which is very very challenging it creates a lot of problems to the team but I feel like you need to be ambitious so when I understood that I felt like

Chris Whyte (: 22:22

Hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 22:34

I like that, I would really want to be part of it and see if I can help them. So this is how I then decided to join the team. And here I am.

Chris Whyte (: 22:42

Amazing.

Chris Whyte (: 22:44

I'm interrupting this episode to share some exciting things happening around Why Design. At the core of this podcast are the incredible design journeys my guests have been on and where they're heading. These journeys stem from the relationships they build, the communities they're part of, and the amazing achievements that come from collaboration. So beyond the podcast, we're hosting regular online huddles and quarterly meetups in the UK with plans underway for an annual gathering in the US.

We're also running hands-on workshops both in person at Makerspaces and online to connect and inspire people in physical product development. So if you'd like to join us or stay in the loop about upcoming events, sign up at teamkodu.com forward slash events or click the link in the show notes. Now back to the episode.

Chris Whyte (: 23:34

So just for people who aren't familiar with the Kelpi story, guess, and the Kelpi products. the typical use case, you know, is it that kind of like say long shelf life product. is plastic film or replacing plastic film.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 23:40

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so basically we are trying to replace plastic from packaging and we think that the most, biggest amount of plastic in packaging is in long shelf life products. So companies as I said, like Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Reggatica and so on, they all have for their own purposes in logistics requirements of about three years shelf life.

The reason they have that is because they need to produce in bulk, they need to transport across the globe, they need to it on the shelf, it needs to stay there for a while, then the consumer takes it and so on. And this takes time. So I think that is a, although it's very challenging, it is quite reasonable to request that.

Chris Whyte (: 24:31

So we're talking kind of hard plastic then, it's not, and kind of detergent bottles, yeah? Okay.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 24:34

At the moment, this

is hard plastic. However, the Kelpi technology is not meant to replace that, exactly like that. when we were trying to understand what we want to do, we decided that we want to be a coating or a liner on paper substrates. So the reason we made that decision is because globally, and that's global numbers, not UK only or Europe.

Chris Whyte (: 24:44

Hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 25:00

globally plastic is being recycled at about 9%. That doesn't mean that it's not recyclable. It means that the actual numbers is at about 9 % only is getting recycled. Whereas paper, maybe because it's more recognizable, maybe it's because old papers would go together rather than PET goes there, PP goes there and so on. I think it's recycled at a much higher rate at about 72%.

Chris Whyte (: 25:13

Yeah.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 25:28

80 % and we felt like paper has a really good end of life. You want to reuse the packaging, you don't want it to be burnt, you don't want it to end up in the landfill or anything like that. But paper cannot offer any barrier properties, it cannot hold products for a long period of time. What if we put our material as a coating on top of the paper or as a liner?

Chris Whyte (: 25:45

Mm-hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 25:53

but it has to have performance that is such that can replace then the hard plastics. And this is where we made that decision. And it was an important decision because it affects everything down the line. But this is when we made the decision that we will be part of paper packaging rather than the whole packaging ourselves.

Chris Whyte (: 26:12

Yeah, yeah. Now that's really interesting. so I'm thinking, when it comes to the, you know, the products that you're targeting, you know, say detergent bottle, you know, you might have a very recognizable kind of detergent bottle that you'd buy in the supermarket. And not too distant future might expect to see a carton instead. So like a like a Tetra pack or something like that, but with the Kelpi lining inside. So

Georgios Gkotsis (: 26:23

Mm.

Mm.

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 26:36

Okay, really cool. Were you,

before you joined Kelpi, you like exploring like biomaterials like that, kind of seaweed or other kind of materials as a, in that use case?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 26:48

It was always something interesting to me. mean, from my Unilever days to my exemplar days, it was always something that I felt like C-Wheel is very hard to compete with because it's such a great feedstock. Its properties are not great in terms of water barrier and so on. And this is where this guy is here.

created this functionalization process when they take the seaweed polysaccharides and the natural vegetable oils they combine the two and then you bring the strength and the benefits of the seaweed and the hydrophobicity of the vegetable oils and this is when you make something that can perform like plastic in terms of its barrier properties. So I hadn't explored this functionalization elements before because I first of I'm not a chemist

Chris Whyte (: 27:22

Mm-hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 27:34

So I wasn't that keen on that. But I was always very, very interested in the Siegfried side and what the great material it is, what use cases can we have with that.

Chris Whyte (: 27:45

Mm hmm.

Now that's awesome. And I guess, yeah, you coming in with your material science kind of hat on is only is only complimenting that. So no, wonderful. So you mentioned on a pre kind of discovery call for this. And obviously, I mentioned it right at start, you know, the thing that really stood out for for you for Kelpi was that because it was a mission first business.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 28:04

Mm.

Chris Whyte (: 28:07

which is clearly kind

Georgios Gkotsis (: 28:08

Mm.

Chris Whyte (: 28:09

of very clear from what you're talking about. But, you know, can you can you expand on, you know, that and, you know, it's clearly you've got a passion there around kind of the mission board. What do you mean kind of by mission? Because I think you mentioned something along the lines of, you know, a lot of a lot of companies, they have a technology and then they build a business around that. But Kelpi had a mission and you found a found an application, didn't you?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 28:14

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 28:32

Perhaps you could expand on that.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 28:35

It's a little bit like the thing we were discussing before about when you have a problem and you start from zero or if you have something else and then you try to fit it to the solution.

Chris Whyte (: 28:44

Yeah.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 28:46

I'm really fascinated by startups in general. It's something that I really like. I like the theory behind how startups work, how you grow them and so on. And I'm very like that. I have worked into amazing startups in my life, but a lot of startups out there, they start with technology.

You know, one of our team members always describes it very well. says they have a solution looking for a problem, which means that you have technology and you try to identify, okay, what problem are we solving now? Let's find a way to commercialize this. And I really liked how in CalP, it was so far from that. was, no, let's define the problem. Let's go back and see exactly why plastic is so difficult to replace and which plastic we need to replace.

and where were we gonna have the biggest impact? it was like, all the difficulties and despite all the challenges, this guy, before I joined by the they picked a very, very, they took on a very, very difficult problem, which was the long shelf life plastics.

and they stuck with it. They did everything they had to do on the chemistry level to develop a technology that can deliver performance as close as possible to plastic while being fully biodecribed. it was, yeah, this is what I mean about this approach and I feel like this now is very much embedded in the purpose of the business as well.

We have worked a lot on our purpose, vision, mission values and so on. And you can see that the whole team is very passionate about what we do. And I think that this is because of the...

the way the company was founded, exactly that approach that we are going to be problem focused and we're going to solve it because we need to. And you see that in everyone in the business. We had our strategy today a few weeks back and everyone was so passionate about it. couldn't believe it. was like, wow, it's amazing. Everyone was so focused on the problem and how we need to solve this and what should their mission be and so on. So I feel like...

I guess it's culture at the end. All of this contributes to a culture. And this approach, I think, created a great culture here in Calgary.

Chris Whyte (: 30:56

Wonderful. So, and how did you go about validating the kind of product market fit with early big brand clients?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 31:01

Yeah.

Yeah, it's all about clients. It's all about understanding if you have something that is interesting to people. our first CEO, Neil, talks about, and founder always talks about this, about how he's a serial entrepreneur. It's about you shouldn't wait too long before you...

test your product market fit. You shouldn't go and design the product too much and make sure everything is perfect, every little detail is great. a balance of course, but you should test the product as soon as possible with somebody who is willing to buy it, somebody who is willing to use it, most importantly. We can only solve the plastic packaging problem if somebody uses our material.

the end of the day. We have amazing technology and amazing team but we wanted to make sure that are we going the right direction or are we completely in the wrong here. So as you say...

TIAB has always had a very, very good interaction with big clients in the industry. Our main applications obviously are the ones that have the most problematic packaging, but also they are some of the biggest users of plastic. it's all kinds of personal care, home care applications, toiletries, cosmetics, beverages, foods, and so on.

going to find.

some found us, clients that represent all of these categories and really big names and some smaller ones. And we find value in all of them because all of them have something to offer to us in terms of direction, steering, and most importantly validation that our technology actually is solving their problems. And we will eventually together offer something to the end consumer that they're going to feel

about themselves using, good about the environment and it's not going to affect the product experience because this is quite important as well especially in things like personal care and food so you need to have like you shouldn't compromise the in-use experience of the product as well.

Chris Whyte (: 33:12

Yeah,

absolutely. So in terms of other challenges, then the you just talked about, I mean, previously, you talked about unrealistic requirements from big companies, you know, you just just literally said you've had some big companies come to you interested in kind of the application. We are what can you make some examples of some of the unrealistic requirements and what you mean by that?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 33:22

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that that's a great great subject because I feel like when you're replacing something as high performing cheap and you know great operational efficiency as plastic

then the expectations are going to be extremely high. sometimes they're unrealistically high because not everyone has tried things as well as us or as well as others. to give you some examples, in an ideal world we would offer yesterday a direct replacement for PET or for a plastic. But unfortunately plastics have

almost a century I think of process optimization, right? And performance optimization and cost optimization and so on. CalPace material is three years old maybe. So it would be very, very unfair to do a direct comparison of these two materials.

And I understand where the requirements are coming from. I completely get it. But in general...

a big portion of clients out there are doing scoping or screening exercises where basically they try to understand what new technologies are there that can replace plastic and when they find them then the next question is, can you offer it to me in this volume, in the same price with plastic and the same performance with plastic? And in many cases the answer is no, cannot do that yet. We need to focus on the yet because eventually you're going to get...

Chris Whyte (: 34:57

Hmm.

You

Georgios Gkotsis (: 35:03

And you need to believe that you're going to get there because that's the whole point of innovation. But you need clients that understand that it's a journey. It's not just a transaction. It's not just, okay, you've got it all.

Chris Whyte (: 35:14

Yeah.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 35:19

job done, I found the replacement for plastic. If that was the case, then we would have replaced plastic. you know, there's so many brilliant startups working in replacing plastic, we wouldn't have any plastic anymore. We would all have, you know, sustainable bio-based technologies replacing them. But the reality of things is that you need partnerships and you need support and you need that validation of product market fit. You need the connections to the converter partners, the

the people that create the packaging and then you need the network, you need the community to help you in pushing this technology from the technical readiness level that it is now to a level that it can start replacing more and more plastic packaging, then it scales, then more and more, then it scales, then more and more. So I think that...

This is one of the biggest challenges. The performance and the cost and the availability benchmark that Plastic has set for all of us, which is very, very difficult to compete with. And then it's about not all of the clients, not all of the business. I've seen, by the way, a really big, you know...

shift and progress in the way big companies approach sustainability now and new technologies. But in many cases it's that for simplicity they would want one material to replace everything in their packaging portfolio, which plastic could do that, but new technologies cannot do that yet. So I can see a world where basically in your portfolio you will have different products that have different

Chris Whyte (: 36:43

Hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 36:56

requirements from their packaging, these products that have these packaging requirements can get away with this material because it's the least performing one and you can do that. Then this difficult section here, give that to Kelby. Kelby can do that. It's a very good high-perform material. Then there are the extremely challenging ones, where you need to wait, when you need to start improving your material.

Chris Whyte (: 36:56

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 37:19

we can take them later, but it's a journey and so on. So that is one of the, you know, not aspirations, but how I can see that it would work better in the future if you could, if you could add some flexibility as a business to the way you approach your packaging and you approach your innovation and so on to be more sustainable.

Chris Whyte (: 37:22

Yeah.

you

Wonderful. Yeah, I know you mentioned on a call previously, there's so many things to consider, isn't there, with the, you know, the trade-offs, performance, shelf life, recyclability. And it's, you know, in an ideal world, you just be able to swap out a material into an existing process. reality is it's such a complex kind of change to get everything right. wonderful. Yeah.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 37:48

So, I think it's so, I think it's so important.

Exactly. And if I may add another one on this one

because you reminded me this. when you have a new technology, obviously the scale itself is a constraining factor. So...

when you start scaling the synthesis of the technology you're going to get this amount of hundreds of kilograms to tons. But for example if a packaging partner will only turn on their extruder if you give them a minimum volume of five tons, you understand where this is like a big problem. We have every intention to work with you people, but you know it needs to have also like a scaled approach and a step by step.

where basically, let's do this scale first, let's do that scale first. And this was like another challenge that I realized in the past two and a half years that as much as you want to progress extremely fast, you need to be cautious about your steps because you don't want to bet the whole ton of material that you have in one trial and you want to try a few things.

Chris Whyte (: 39:04

Yeah, absolutely. it's, it's, know, on the one hand, you've got the mission that you're pursuing, but then you, you cannot ignore the commercial aspect of it, especially as a startup, you know, you've got a, a runway. And then when you're approaching, we'll commit the big, big boys, you know, they've got the commercial side of it as well. They see the mission, they see how important that is, but at end of the day, there's got to be a commercially viable decision as well. So, yeah.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 39:08

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 39:31

complicated. I guess that leads nicely into the next section, which is around kind of your transition then from kind of, you know, material scientists to CTO, you know, how, has your role changed then since becoming a CTO? And, you know, what, been some of the biggest challenges around growing a product team?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 39:43

Yeah.

A lot of changes actually. So I had multiple roles in multiple.

Maybe not so many, but let's start from scratch. My very, very first role really in Unilever was senior scientist in the new technology team. And then quickly after, when I had some success with sustainability, I became the new technology leader. That was great. again, thanks to my really great manager back then who trusted me with that. And then I moved to example again as a material science and then product development manager, very, very soon.

after and then I moved to Kelpi as a head of product and then within Kelpi I moved to the CTO role so I felt like

There is an element of what is your style as a personality and what you like to do, how you like to work. So I was always a very hands-on person and I like to do things, you know, to see the things that I'm working on, to touch them, to make sure that I work with the team rather than, you know, just see the results. And I think this was the first thing that as a CTO, it kind of changed.

significantly. I feel like for the first time, because with the role you become extremely busy straight away. It was almost like, you know, in a night my calendar almost doubled in, you know, business levels. And as a result you need to change your style. You cannot be as hands-on as you would wish. But this is where trust is coming in and this is where you make sure that you have the right people.

the moment my CEO told me that they want me to take on the role. Literally the next day I assigned a new product manager, somebody internally that I really trust and to support me with that because I don't think I would do that. And we hired two of the best product developers that anyone can ever wish for. And then we got another amazing product manager along.

you know, the way and then on the engineering side obviously I have the most amazing principal engineer who can do anything by himself, he never asks for anything and an amazing process engineer as well. So what I'm trying to say is that as you progress it's very key to have the right people and it's the biggest change that I have realized that from the role of the CDO

And I said it in the first time, you know, they announced that I am going to be the CTO. I know very well that the CTO is as good as their team. And yeah, I guess I'm a good CTO because I have the best team.

But in all seriousness, it's very much about, it changes significantly. It's about the technical bit is becoming all about strategy. It's becoming all about vision. It's becoming all about pushing the right things and almost sitting in the interface between a small picture and bigger picture.

And on the other side, it's all about people. It's all about making sure you have people you can trust, people that trust you as well, people that you you have a good team that works well together and make sure that everyone is motivated, everyone is with you on the journey and you are willing to work together rather than, you know, have unnecessary conflicts, unnecessary disagreements, you know, delays and things and so on.

So that was, think, in a nutshell, my experience on becoming a CDO. I've spent now about one and a half years in this role. there was a technical bit, so how we can drive the technology where it is. I think everything that I mentioned mostly is under this.

territory, the technical roadmap and the product development and the scale up of the technology. There is the other element of being a CDO, is all about investors, funding rounds, outreach, know, the technical image of the business and so on, which is very, very interesting, I would say.

It reminded me a lot of the client projects, not gonna lie. I I used a lot of my skills in client interface and to...

to approach this to understand how the investor is essentially your client. They want to understand your product and you need to provide them with all the information they need. But they also need to see your vision, they also need to see your strategy, they also need to see your passion about where you want to bring the technology. And then they will decide if they want to invest in you or not. And I was very lucky that the moment I got the role, we started the...

Chris Whyte (: 44:11

Mm-hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 44:21

second seed funding round that we had which was very very successful and that was a great great journey I really really enjoyed it.

Chris Whyte (: 44:29

Wonderful. Yeah, it's really good that you can pull obviously your previous experiences out, but it's still, you know, you're on a journey, like I said, with the business and you're learning as well. So wonderful. So what are the next kind of big milestones then for Kelpi this year and beyond?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 44:36

Yeah.

So this is a big year for us. The number one, I would say, is the scale of the technology. So Kelpi, we always have identified that we don't want to build our own factory, at least for the moment. What we want to do is to work with partners to scale the technology, the synthesis of it.

And that is because that gives us the flexibility to keep what we're doing, what we're great at, which is innovating and product development and new alterations to the technology and so on. So this year we plan to bring the technology to Tomsk. This will unlock a lot of material and we're going to have a lot to play with on the next stages of the life cycle of the technology, which is...

take that now and put it on big paper rolls and we make all kinds of conversion trials and then applications and so on. The next one is of course to go to the market. As I said we have a lot of client interest and we want to showcase how we do it.

complete the picture from synthesis to scale and then application conversion, packaging, filling with the product and then how it sits on the self. So that's another big milestone. And the biggest one for me as well is growing the team even further. I feel like we do want to bring more people in as we grow, work on many more interesting projects that are more interesting projects than we have people. It's always the case.

And that's another big one for me. I don't know if you can call it a milestone, but it's always one of the funnest things to do, to bring new expertise, new talent, and see how you change, how they change the team, how everything changes.

Chris Whyte (: 46:43

of it.

Yeah, it's exciting times. I mean, yeah, if you need any support with it, I know a good recruiter. So there you go. There's the plug. Wonderful. So how soon do you think we could see Kelpi products on the shelves then? Is it as soon as this year, do reckon? Or is it kind of a bit far?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 47:04

We aim for that, yes. Of course it's going to be probably a smaller launch, but I will let you know when it's out.

Chris Whyte (: 47:13

Yeah, we look forward to following that journey. and yeah, we're kind of coming close to time, but I think on our prior calls, you mentioned you were experimenting with AI and how that might support kind of innovation and materials R &D, but can you give us a very quick kind of idea of what kind of you're playing around with?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 47:20

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

yeah.

Yeah.

This is a very interesting area. It's packaging, new materials and artificial intelligence. I'm not talking about LLMs, I'm not talking about using GPT for scanning the internet and so on. Because obviously, this could be one use case, but...

It doesn't have a lot of meat on it. It's just another way to use Google, I guess.

I'm talking about machine learning. talking about how we can utilize our data in the most meaningful way possible to reach to new technologies, to reach to new outcomes much faster. And I think one of the biggest challenges that every startup has is back on the runway that you mentioned. We all have limited amount of time left. It doesn't matter if you have 10 millions in the bank or 20 millions in the bank. You, unless you are, you know,

making profit, you have a limited amount of time. The more you grow the team, the more you spend per month. And as a result, this reduces and reduces. So I feel like it's a great time to be alive because these new technologies with machine learning and AI are flourishing so much and they're moving so fast. And I really feel like

Chris Whyte (: 49:03

Hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 49:03

The data is going to be so important in that journey because these models are going to become smarter and smarter and there's nothing I can do to change that. There is no way I can improve a model myself. However, we're really good in collecting data that have to do with packaging. We have a lot of understanding from everything from chemistry to packaging on the self. And what can you do with this data? What can you do with machine learning to accelerate innovation and to bring new technology?

Chris Whyte (: 49:33

Mm-hmm.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 49:33

much faster into the market and I think this is where I'm personally very passionate about it but we have already started exploring these avenues the proper way. So yeah it's not about hype and I'm very honest here because there is a lot of hype about AI in that case it's more about how can we utilize the best tools possible and bring a lot of value in our data.

Chris Whyte (: 50:00

Now that's exciting. I think that's exactly where, you know, there's massive opportunities when it comes to AI, isn't it? It's number crunching and it's testing and experiments like at scale, you know, suit really quickly and cheaply. It's exciting stuff. So wonderful. So we'll wrap it up very shortly, you know, any...

How can people get in touch with you? And how can people support or get involved with Kelpi?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 50:26

Well, first of all, if you are interested in what you've heard, then of course you can either contact me at georgios.kelpi.net or you can message the whole company at hello.kelpi.net. Somebody's on the other end of that email, by the way. It's not an I will respond to you. We are always, you know, obviously very keen to speak to...

Chris Whyte (: 50:44

haha

Georgios Gkotsis (: 50:52

interesting partners that, you know, can follow us, you know, and support us in this journey from packaging partners to potential clients and brands that are interested in our technology. But in general, I'm genuinely very, very interested to hear from every person out there that is interested in the technology and they want to have a chat. I always have this approach and I'm very happy to talk

Chris Whyte (: 51:17

Amazing. And I'm very grateful for you having that at you because it's the very reason why we're having this conversation now. So it's wonderful. Any final reflections or advice for others working in sustainability or deep tech?

Georgios Gkotsis (: 51:24

Hmm.

It's challenging, so keep it up. You're on the right path, 100%. It's very rewarding, and I think it's one of those that you need to have resilience and to keep on trying things until it works. And as long as you have the right purpose and the right mindset, I think the sky's the limit,

Chris Whyte (: 51:55

Yeah, wonderful. Brilliant. Well, Georgios, thank you again so much for joining us on Why Design. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Georgios Gkotsis (: 52:02

Thank you very much.

Chris Whyte (: 52:05

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Why Design. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a review wherever you're listening. It really helps others discover the podcast. And while you're at it, why not share it with a friend or colleague who do enjoy it too. If you'd like to stay connected or explore more about the work we're doing at Kodu.

feel free to visit teamkodu.com or connect with me, Chris Whyte on LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time.