The Notpla story: From a student kitchen to mixing with royalty

Andy:

Hello, and welcome to Ashurst Business Agenda. My name's Andy McLean, and you're listening to a very special episode in our Outpacing Change miniseries where we meet with visionaries who are changing the world around them. In today's episode, we have a treat. I'm delighted that we were joined by creative revolutionary Pierre Paslier, who is rewriting the rule book in the packaging business. It's an amazing story that he shares with us.

Before we jump into that, it's important to say that in Australia we acknowledge at the start of meetings and gatherings that we're actually on the country of First Nations people who are part of the oldest continuous living civilization on earth and who never ceded sovereignty. In particular, I'd like to pay my own respects to the traditional custodians of Dharawal country, which is the land from which I'm joining this conversation today. And I'd also like to pay my respect to elders past and present and to all First Nations people listening today.

Now let's jump into a little bit of background about Pierre. So Pierre Paslier is co-founder of Notpla, which is a sustainable packaging business with a radical mission to make plastic packaging disappear by using advanced all-natural packaging made from seaweed and plants. Now, if that sounds ambitious, it is. But in less than a decade, Notpla has already embarked on some remarkable R&D, collaborated with chemists and engineers, partnered with Lucozade and Just Eat, and closed a £10 million series A financing round to accelerate Notpla's work. So not surprising perhaps that Pierre and his colleagues have been recognised in a number of awards, including the Cannes Lion Design Grand Prix award and most recently the Earthshot Prize, which was sort of described as a bit like the Nobel Prize for the environment.

And Pierre has a lot to say in our conversation in a short space of time. We talk about the highs and the lows of his remarkable journey from early funding struggles to mixing with royalty. Pierre also tells us about how to galvanise colleagues and partners to deliver major change, and he shares his advice for business leaders, who are seeking to identify future megatrends and opportunities. Pierre is extremely honest about the challenges that they've been through but also some of the amazing achievements that they've had to date. It's a really interesting discussion, so let's jump in and hear the conversation. So, Pierre, welcome to Ashurst's Outpacing Change miniseries.

Pierre:

Hello, hello.

Andy:

I'd like to start today by painting a little picture for our listeners. Nine years ago, you and your friend Rodrigo were conducting some wildly imaginative experiments in the kitchen of your student flat in London. You discovered the potential of seaweed as a natural alternative to plastic packaging. What was your first viable product?

Pierre:

So the first product that we came up with, Ooho, ended up being a really great exemplification of what we stand for, which is let's make packaging that looks more like what you find in nature than what you find in industrial factories, this idea that you can make packaging that is edible. It behaves like a fruit. Fruits have been here for hundreds of millions of years, so there is something that is quite magical about making packaging that just behaves that way.

And what we found out is that there were a few places where our level of control of the technology was ready to work right now, one of them being marathons. So we've been doing a lot of sport events, races where typically there's thousands of runners who might grab one of those types of bottles and make it useful for a matter of seconds and then throw it away, and then you see all of this piling up. So that was a really exciting use case of this technology.

We also kind of used it for festivals where you're typically quite remote. You don't have the level of control of the packaging that you might have in the city. And anything that kind of ends up in the environment, if it's made of plastic, is going to be there 500 years from now. So it's really about preventing any of the bad stuff to enter the environment.

Andy:

Well, that early idea captured the popular imagination, millions of views online, TV coverage across the globe. So you had kind of, I suppose, a proof of concept at that point and some media buzz, but how did you go about commercialising all of that?

Pierre:

At that point, we were quite excited to try to automatize the process. We knew that making them one by one, by hand was never going to be kind of scalable. So we embarked on a big planning journey of understanding how do we even go about finding the right type of experts for developing machines or stabilising the material, obtaining certain properties. So it was probably the first couple of years of just trying to understand how all of this comes into a cohesive plan of action and what kind of money we need to kind of make this a reality.

And at that point, we didn't have a background in creating business or entrepreneurship. So we had to learn a lot of the kind of fundamentals on the spot. I actually used to be a packaging engineer, so I was working in plastic production. So I was familiar with the industrialization parts of traditional materials but didn't know about fundraising or striking partnerships with manufacturing companies, or getting brands to give us some sort of intention of working with us. So all of this, we learned thanks to the support of some of our incubators that we were part of or some of our mentors.

But it took a while. I think that it definitely took a longer time than we thought. And eventually, at that point, there was no real category for plastic alternatives. It was before Blue Planet, the focus on the straw in the nose of the turtle, and David Attenborough kind of making people feel not just about a logical response to data but an emotional response to the fact that we're really destroying the beautiful ocean that is very fragile. So I think that there was this turning point where we saw people taking this a lot more seriously. But before that, there was no VC funds focused on plastic alternatives or plastic pollution. Everyone was focused on desalination and solar panels.

So we didn't fall into any box of traditional investors. We couldn't find any investors to actually give us a term sheet or anchor around. So at the end, we had to go all in, and we went for crowdfunding campaign, equity crowdfunding campaign. That was the final test. Either it works, and we go for it, or it doesn't work, and we stop here because no one wants to be joining this adventure with a financial partner. And to our surprise, it was a huge success. So we raised £850,000 in just three days versus trying to raise maybe half of that over the last year and pitching to all of the funds and the family offices, the angels, and no one wanted to be making the first move.

So that was a very, very exciting moment because all of a sudden it became kind of a reality. We raised twice as much as we were hoping to be able to raise. We were able to finally put those plans to action, hire some experts to work with us on this automation journey, and kind of start working with more partners. And that's how we got to the point where we were able to service a little bit more that market. And that opened a lot of doors, doing the London Marathon and all sorts of big proof points in the market, that this was not just an idea. It was starting to replace plastic actually.

Andy:

Wow. And just sort of thinking back to those three magical days when the crowdfunding campaign was going on, and the total's going up and up. How did the two of you feel?

Pierre:

It was unreal. At that point, we had a small team of four or five people. We were in the kitchen kind of behind our computers, just answering comments and emails. And at some point it kind of got so much momentum that there was nothing to do. It was amazing. We were ready to have to do a lot of convincing and sending some further information to investors that were kind of half convinced, but at some point we just sit back and seek how... It was just the notifications. It was £100, £500, 1,000, 50,000, 20,000.

It just kept on coming, so it was really an insane kind of moment. And at the back of this, some of the videos that were shared on social that were really fueling all of that interest, they got almost a hundred million views. So it was a completely insane level of awareness for a small startup, a small team of four or five people in their kitchen. So it was a real internet moment.

Andy:

That is amazing. So obviously, you experienced a dizzying high there. But like all business leaders, you must have tasted some lows along the way too. What have been some of the biggest obstacles that you've encountered, and how did you work around those?

Pierre:

When we were facing this constant feed of rejection from investors the very first time we went about fundraising, they came a point where... Bear in mind, we were not paying ourselves for kind of a couple of years. Luckily, my parents were paying my rent, but that was going to come to an end, the moment where you can't go on forever if it doesn't take off. So that was really a moment where we set ourselves a deadline. We said like, "If by this date nothing happens, let's call it a day. And let's go work for one of the big tech companies and have a comfortable salary and just enjoy a normal life." So we had set ourselves... At some point when we saw that there was just kind of no traction, set a bit of a deadline. Luckily, the wave picked us up just before that, but there's been a lot of moments where you have big doubts.

If you are working on something that is waiting for a breakthrough rather than something that you can see a linear progress, it's very hard to deal with the uncertainty of a breakthrough kind of coming in. And I think that's one of the things of working with science-led technology, is that you can't predict that you're going to be able to hit a certain thing based on time. You can do the job of putting the right inputs so that it actually has a chance to happen, but you can't predict exactly that this is the trial. This is the moment where all those parameters work, finally understood, and everything works.
So I think that's one of the big challenge of explaining that to all of your stakeholders, the team who's working on this, the investors who are backing you, the commercial partner who's made a bit of a leap of faith to jump on this journey with you. So all of this is requiring a lot of management of expectations. And at the same time, I think that's part of the rush of adrenaline that you get when you do these very innovative products.

Andy:

Okay. So you've told us a little bit about your first viable product, and it sounds quite amazing, Pierre. I wonder if you can give our listeners perhaps a little sneak peek of what's coming down the conveyor belt next for you guys. What's your next product?

Pierre:

So after Ooho, we realised that actually we could use seaweed as an alternative to plastic in quite a few other applications. And one of them is for takeaway food boxes. Typically, they're either made of plastic entirely, or they're made of cardboard with a thin layer of plastic on the inside because it's never really just cardboard. Cardboard on its own doesn't hold hot, greasy food. You need to either add a thin layer of plastic or some nasty chemicals to make the cardboard resist all of that moisture and grease.

So we started working on applying our learnings about seaweed as a way of making a varnish or a coating on cardboard to make takeaway boxes that would be completely natural, biodegradable, and recyclable. And we've really managed to kind of scale this up significantly. So basically in the past year, we've been able to run on the same industrial lines that use synthetic materials, with our seaweed, and make products in the millions. And this year we should be able to make in the tens of millions, hopefully in the hundreds of millions.

So we're really now at a level of technology readiness where we can have a large manufacturing capacity for bringing this to the market, which is super exciting because it also means that we've been able to reduce our cost down and really get to a position of competitive pricing in the market. And luckily with some partners, for example, Just Eat, the food delivery company, we've been introducing this to a lot of restaurants. So now we are active in eight countries in Europe. We have a lot of restaurants who have already made the switch. And we're really looking for the next range of partners, restaurant groups, stadiums, places where there is consumption of food on the go to stop using their plastic line, like take away boxes, and switch to a seaweed one.

Andy:

I'm just sort of reflecting on everything that we've talked about so far, and I'm interested to look at this from the perspective of other business leaders who might be listening right now. Perhaps they're looking to deliver radical change in their organisations. What kind of advice would you have for them?

Pierre:

I think that you need to have a level of support from some champions internally or externally that are really going to be your relay. I think we've never seen the level of speed of adoption like we've seen in the cases where we have to do all of the convincing. Some of our most kind of successful commercial partnerships are really down to a few key individuals that are part of these organisations.

And they see for themselves that this is the legacy they want to leave behind. They're working on a broken model. They know that it has a potential for being fixed, and it's going to take a lot of efforts and a lot of energy. And they want to be able to say, "I played a key role in fixing the model." And I think that it's about identifying those people who are going to be prone to take that risk.

And I think maybe the other thing is that it's extremely hard to innovate in an existing organisation. So I think creating that space and having teams that are able to look at a product without the rules of everything else applying to them is really important because otherwise it's a non-starter. And I think that this is something that we are ourselves kind of trying to find a recipe for because we are no longer the four or five people in the kitchen. We're now kind of 70 people with multiple product lines being produced in millions of units now.

So how do we keep on innovating and finding space for those next generation ideas that might be overtaking what we are doing today? If we can kind of find an even better solution, why wouldn't we consider it? So I think that, yeah, there's a structural element of just making sure that the conditions are right for some of that change to happen outside of the normal requirements of business.

Andy:

Well, we've talked a little bit about people backing you. And I can't help but ask about one person in particular who fits that category, and that's Prince William no less. My understanding is that he's been championing the work of Notpla as part of the Earthshot Prize that you won last year. So you must tell us a little bit about that, Pierre. How did all that come about, and what's the prize all about? Tell us a bit about it.

Pierre:

Yeah. So we're super honoured to have received the Earthshot Prize in the Build a Waste-Free World category in December. It's really the most prestigious award in sustainability that there is. So they try to make it the Nobel Prize of sustainability. So it's still very much unreal that we would have received that prize. It comes with a million pounds, and basically everyone has been very interested to know what we're going to do with the million pound.

But more importantly, it comes with a huge amount of support from a very large team. It's a big organisation. They have over 50 people working on accelerating, as much as possible, the impact of all of the 15 finalists every year that are going through this accelerator. And they've been really incredible at making super high-level connections with investors, commercial partners, and industrial partners, and they're finding us people to work pro bono for us. We have free lawyers and free accountants and free people doing our taxes. It's insane. They're finding people who just want to get behind all of these positive ideas and give a little bit of that extra push that they can do at their level. So it's really an incredible setup.

And the whole organisation is patron, and it was started by Prince William. And so it's been really interesting to have a few interactions with him. I think what's really clear is that there is a strong interest in sustainability. And all the kind of support that their royal fame can bring to this space to accelerate and change faster is something that they're really kind of willing to do. So the network that you tap into is just insane. And they've been very open about making personal introductions coming from the prince to talk to X, Y, Z. That is important for all of us in the finalist and winners of the Earthshot Prize. So that level of support is changing the game.

And what we've seen before... We're still a small company. People are curious to hear about what we do. But when it comes to really doing business or getting a slot on a production line or getting a prioritised delivery of raw materials or whatever it is, we are usually at the bottom of the list. It's like, "Let's do all of the important clients, and then we will worry about the innovators." And that has massively changed. People are now, "Hey, can we talk next week? Can we bring the MD?" Or, "The board would love to have a conversation with you." So that level of engagement, from the perspective of a startup, is something that is so much more valuable than £1 million. And I think that's really what the magic of the Earthshot Prize is, is that it gets you kind of a level of credibility and level of engagement that you can't get on your own.

Andy:

Extraordinary story. So imagine that I went back in time, and I walked into your student flat nine years ago, walked into the kitchen. There's you and Rodrigo, and you're doing all of your experiments in there. And I stopped you for a second. I said, "You're not going to believe this, but this is the journey that you're about to embark upon. You're going to win the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for sustainability." What would the two of you have said?

Pierre:

We would've obviously kind of not believed a word of this because obviously we believed in what we were doing, but we had so little experience of entrepreneurship that it was complete fog of war. We don't know what we're getting into. We'll just see how we can best navigate our way through this. So we would've never imagined that it took this kind of direction, that we would get this opportunity of actually creating this team and working on this project at such a higher level. And yeah, so it was a very emotional moment because looking back, yeah, we've been resilient. We've gone through a few hard moments, and we kept on going. So receiving that recognition was... Yeah. It was a very high emotional point for all of us.

Andy:

Now in this Outpacing Change miniseries, we're looking at megatrends that will impact businesses in the future. And I really want to ask you about environmental, social, and governance issues, otherwise known as ESG, which has massively shot up corporate agendas recently. Investors, employees, and other stakeholders are heavily influenced now by ESG. How can corporates set themselves on the right path to show that they are authentically serious about ESG?

Pierre:

Yeah. I think what's really tricky is that you always find one of your competitors being more greenwashing than you. And the question is, what do you do? Do you align on the bottom level of genuineness in this space, or do you kind of try to be a bit of a pioneer? I think one of the trends that we're seeing is that we're going towards a more and more transparent world where companies are willingly showing where the gap is. And I think that's something that is quite powerful. I think it might be an awkward conversation to have with the bull of a company, but it trickles down.

I think that there's a lot of value in attracting the right talents to work on an organisation where you are really clear about your purpose. You're really clear about what the cost structure of your products are and where you are actually exploiting unfairly a resource or a group of people or whatever it is, and being clear about that not being forever but being kind of something that you are actively working on. I think eventually it's a bit of a existential crisis for a lot of businesses. Other businesses who might start from scratch and do all of these things, right, might be here to take all of your market shares.

So if you don't engage with this fully, you might find yourself without a business.

Andy:

Okay, Pierre, we're going to pick up the pace now. We've reached the point in the episode where we're going to hit you with some quick-fire questions. It's just a bit of fun. You need to answer with the first things that come into your head.

Pierre:

Sounds good.

Andy:

Okay. So let's jump straight in. First question, how would your colleagues describe you in just three words?

Pierre:

Positive, getting involved in too many things, and much better.

Andy:

Okay. Well, you cheated slightly there because that was more than three words, but we're going to let you off because this is quick-fire. The next question, if you could have a coffee meeting with any leader from the past or present, who would it be?

Pierre:

So it's interesting because we've had this as a real question with the prince recently, so we have that list. So I have about 50 names. We've put a lot of thoughts into who makes the biggest difference for us. We've taken a slightly tactical approach of talking to a big food service company that could literally buy billions of our products tomorrow, so the CEO of Compass Group is who we are trying to get to. But I wouldn't say no to a coffee with Barack Obama or Greta. I think that would be quite cool.

Andy:

All right, all right. Well, you never know, right? We'll tag them in a social post when we publish this podcast, Pierre. And who knows, maybe you'll get a call. Right. Next question, what is the biggest myth or misconception about your industry?

Pierre:

The biggest myth is that plastic is a good material choice because it's light. People think that it's better than glass or other kind of materials because it's lighter to transport from point A to point B. But actually, all of the life cycle analysis that were done on plastic don't include the long-term health disturbance effect that it has on microplankton and all sorts of systems. So actually, probably plastic is first and foremost a climate change problem, and it could be thousands of times worse than glass and other solutions.

Andy:

Great, okay. When it comes to generating new ideas, are you a morning person or an evening person?

Pierre:

Evening person.

Andy:

And finally, can you name one book or podcast that you would recommend for business leaders?

Pierre:

That's a tough one because usually I'm not a big fan of power books that have some sort of recipe for getting everything kind of working. If anything, what we've come to realise in our own journey is that you constantly have [inaudible 00:25:16] make up the rules for yourself, and it's very hard to kind of find a pre-written script for that. So yeah, no power book to recommend.

Andy:

Well, it sounds like maybe you need to write a book of your own, Pierre, and my gosh, what story you'd have to tell if you did. Anyway, I'd like to end the podcast with a couple of questions about the future. Notpla has an amazing track record of looking ahead to identify opportunities in the marketplace. I wondered, have you got any advice for others who are trying to spot future trends and opportunities?

Pierre:

I think there's a few things that are here to stay. We're going to have to completely clean up our manufacturing industries to be suitable for the long term. So anything that is possible to do on that front with either a new twist on an old kind of technology is something that could have a lot of kind of potential, so sometimes looking at what worked in the past before we introduce petrochemicals, and then try to see if that applies today, is something that has a lot of potential.

Andy:

And finally, I guess, I'd like to ask a question about your own future. All business leaders find themselves sometimes, I think, ruminating on what's next for them but also what they're leaving behind. So I'm really interested, Pierre, for you to just give us a sense of what you hope your legacy will be when you step away from Notpla one day.

Pierre:

I think it's very easy. It's how many single-use plastics have we prevented by introducing those natural, seaweed-based packaging solutions? One of the big milestone for a while was like, "We've got to get to the million." Now that we are at the million, I guess the next stage is the billion. So if we can prevent a billion single-use plastic from entering the environment, it would be a pretty good legacy.

Andy:

Oh, that's beautifully put, Pierre. And I think that's the perfect note to end on. So all that remains for me to say is thank you so very much for being generous with your time today and sharing your experiences and ideas. It's been a really enjoyable conversation.

Pierre:

Thank you so much.

Andy:

That was Pierre Paslier from Notpla, and you've been listening to Ashurst Business Agenda. This episode has been part of our special Outpacing Change miniseries where we speak with innovators and disruptors who have changed the world around them. To make sure you don't miss any of our future episodes, subscribe to Business Agenda on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, feel free to leave us a rating or a review. Until next time, thanks so much for listening. And goodbye for now.

Speaker 3:

If you enjoy Ashurst Business Agenda, why not check out our other two podcast series as well? Ashurst Legal Outlook explains the emerging legal trends and requirements of our fast-changing world. And ESG Matters @ Ashurst reveals how business leaders are rising to mounting environmental, social, and governance challenges. You can listen and subscribe to Legal Outlook and ESG Matters wherever you get your podcasts.