Every start-up is aiming to resolve an issue. Often, it is not the one you initially pictured when you established the business, as Mari-Ann Meigo Fonseca, co-founder of Tallinn-based Gelatex can confirm.
Gelatex produces 3D nanofibrous scaffolds for numerous applications, varying from cell culture to tissue engineering.
“But we began the business with an entirely various service concept in mind,” Meigo Fonseca informs TNW.
Preliminary target: the fabric market
Developing a business is frequently less about staying with a preliminary, stiff strategy and more about accepting and adjusting to modifications along the method.
With a background in the fabric market and garment innovation, Meigo Fonseca was at first looking for to add to the sustainability of the style sector– an objective that led her to pursue an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Technology Management at the University of Tartu in 2015.
There she fulfilled her co-founder, products researcher and engineer Märt-Erik Martens.
In 2016, the duo took part in the ClimateLaunchpad competitors and won with their concept of producing leather-like fabric utilizing gelatin nanofibres. They established Gelatex the very same year and continued establishing the item.
“One of the very first difficulties we had was that, even if we might make the product work, we would not have the ability to make it at scale with the existing production innovations,” Meigo Fonseca states.
“It would simply be too expensive.”
The birth of HaloSpin
The duo chose to resolve the issue themselves, and in 2017, Martens established a brand-new nanofibre production innovation he called “HaloSpin.”
Halospinning works by spinning (or drawing) nanofibres from liquid polymer services without utilizing electrostatic forces.
It’s faster than standard options such as electrospinning, and can increase production capability by 100 times, Gelatex states. This equates to cost savings of as much as 90%.
“The greatest commercial system of electrospinning can cost about EUR8 million and can produce about 360 grams of nanofibers per hour,” Meigo Fonseca states.
“With our pilot maker we can produce 2.2 kg per hour, and we are currently developing a maker [with a capacity] of 5kg per hour.”
Left wing: Gelatex’s halospun nanofibres. On the right: electrospun nanofibres. Credit: Gelatex
Another benefit of the approach are the special morphology residential or commercial properties it provides. This leads to extremely permeable 3D scaffolds that can be personalized to various products and applications.
Rotating to the medical sector and cultured meat
Thanks to halospinning, the start-up moved towards the very first product-market fit with a number of global business.
While there was interest, the business never ever got to the phase where it might in fact offer the item.
“The COVID pandemic in 2020 was the start of a pivot for us,” she states. That’s when Gelatex started utilizing its innovation to mass-produce nanofibre filtering product for face masks.
The procedure made it possible for the creators to understand the complete capacity of nanofibres and determine the requirement for scalable production in cell culture.