SMUSH Materials is the winner of the Sustainability/Climate Change award at Start Cup Lombardia 2024, recognized for its production of 100% natural and compostable secondary packaging solutions, ideal for protecting heavy or fragile products. This is achieved using mycelium fermentation technologies—the root system of mushrooms—to transform organic agro-industrial by-products, which have no economic value, into competitive and sustainable packaging materials.
“SMUSH is a startup that develops 100% natural and compostable packaging to protect heavy or fragile items. This is done by using organic by-products and mycelium, which grows as a sort of natural adhesive,” explains Luca Ficarelli, co-founder of SMUSH Materials. “The idea is to create an alternative to polystyrene that, at the end of its lifecycle, can be disposed of in organic waste as it is compostable.”
SMUSH’s development focuses on markets and industries that require protective solutions for their products. “The packaging sector is incredibly vast,” Ficarelli continues. “Today, we are focusing on industrial secondary packaging, but we aim to expand into other categories in the future, such as food packaging.”
The medium-term goal is ambitious: by the end of 2025, SMUSH plans to establish its pilot plant. Even before that, the startup aims to develop a demo plant to showcase its technology on a smaller industrial scale and initiate its first supplies to customers.
