Finnish startup Elea & Lili raises €2.5M to replace the plastic

Polyacrylate is the synthetic crystal at the heart of every modern disposable nappy, is derived from petroleum, and it does not break down. It persists for centuries, leaching microplastics into soil and groundwater as it degrades. The hygiene industry has long regarded it as an engineering necessity: nothing else absorbs as fast, as much, or as reliably.

Elea & Lili, a deep-tech spinout from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, disagrees. The company has developed a Cellulose Super Absorbent, it calls it CSA, that it says matches the performance of fossil-based polymers while being fully biodegradable and microplastic-free.

Today, they announced a €2.5 million seed round led by Lifeline Ventures to bring CSA from laboratory to production line.

The raise is modest by deep-tech standards, but the ambition is not. The global superabsorbent polymer market is dominated by two applications: baby diapers and agricultural water retention. Both currently depend entirely on fossil-based materials.

Between them, they represent tens of billions of euros in annual procurement, and, the company argues, a structurally unsustainable supply chain as plastic regulation tightens across the EU and beyond.

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Cellulose doing the work of plastic

CSA is made from cellulose, the structural polysaccharide found in plant cell walls and one of the most abundant organic materials on Earth. VTT has been working on cellulose-based functional materials for years; Elea & Lili was spun out to commercialise a specific family of superabsorbent formulations that its founders believe are ready for industrial scale.

The company says CSA is compatible with existing diaper production lines, a critical claim, since any material that requires manufacturers to retool their factories faces a much steeper commercial path.

It also says absorption performance is comparable to conventional synthetic polymers in laboratory conditions, though independent peer-reviewed validation at production scale has not yet been published. The company is in the process of advancing industrial validation, which the seed capital will help fund.

Lifeline Ventures, the Helsinki-based fund behind Wolt and several other Nordic deep-tech companies, led the round. The capital will also support agricultural field trials and the expansion of the core team.

I think the timing of the raise is not accidental. The EU’s single-use plastics directive and evolving microplastics regulation are creating real commercial urgency for alternatives across the consumer goods industry.
Diaper manufacturers, including several major multinationals, have made public commitments to reduce their plastic footprint, but have so far found no credible drop-in replacement for polyacrylate at scale.

The agricultural application is less well-known but potentially larger. Superabsorbent polymers are embedded in soil to retain moisture and reduce irrigation requirements, a use case that is growing as water stress intensifies across southern Europe, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa.

A biodegradable alternative that breaks down cleanly after a season, rather than accumulating in farmland, would address a regulatory and ecological problem that is just beginning to attract serious attention.

Whether CSA can survive the journey from validated pilot to commercial scale at competitive cost remains the central question. Deep-tech materials companies have a tendency to perform beautifully in the lab and encounter brutal economics at the factory gate.

Elea & Lili now has €2.5 million and a window of regulatory tailwind to find out if this time is different.