{"id":181488,"date":"2026-09-23T07:32:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T05:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=181488"},"modified":"2026-09-17T13:32:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T11:32:19","slug":"greewave-develops-bio-based-synthetic-rubber-from-industrial-side-streams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/greewave-develops-bio-based-synthetic-rubber-from-industrial-side-streams\/","title":{"rendered":"Greewave develops bio-based synthetic rubber from industrial side streams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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Erik Persson and Luis Valencia, Greewave \u00a9 Greewave<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Rubber is all around us \u2013 in shoes, tyres, sports equipment and countless industrial products. Yet today\u2019s rubber production relies on two raw material sources that come with major challenges: tropical rubber trees and fossil oil. Greewave, a new company joining the Inkubera incubator, wants to change that. Using side streams from the forestry and citrus industries, the company is developing a bio-based synthetic rubber that could eventually provide an alternative to both.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greewave was founded by Luis Valencia and Erik Persson. Luis is CEO and has a background in materials chemistry and business development, while Erik is CTO, with experience in areas including process engineering, biomass and the forest industry. Together, they bring extensive expertise in biomaterials \u2013 and the technology behind Greewave is based on research that Luis has worked on for more than a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their starting point is a material most of us rarely give much thought to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cRubber is one of the fundamental materials of modern society, yet its value chain is extremely vulnerable,\u201d says Luis Valencia.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Natural rubber is largely sourced from plantations in Southeast Asia, creating significant geopolitical dependency while supply is limited. Synthetic rubber presents a different challenge: it is produced primarily from fossil-based raw materials. Greewave\u2019s ambition is therefore to create a new raw material pathway that is both bio-based and can be produced closer to the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning from nature<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The company\u2019s solution is called RubraQ\u2122. Its raw materials are terpenes, compounds found, among other sources, in by-products from the pulp and citrus industries. Rather than growing new crops specifically for production, Greewave aims to make use of materials already generated by existing industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the innovation is about more than replacing one raw material with another. To understand why natural rubber performs so well, Luis has studied how the material is actually structured at the molecular level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe wanted to understand what makes natural rubber so good. It is not just about a particular molecule, but about how the material is structured. Once we understand that architecture, we can try to recreate it in a new way,\u201d he<\/strong> explains.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The result is a biosynthetic latex that can be further processed into rubber. The technology has moved beyond the laboratory stage, is patent-pending, and Greewave has validated continuous production at small pilot scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, the company is targeting applications including footwear, sports, outdoor products and other consumer goods. For several applications, the material\u2019s properties are already comparable to those of conventional rubber. In the longer term, Greewave is targeting significantly larger-volume markets such as industrial products and tyres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pilots with international companies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The next important step is to test the material together with customers. Greewave currently has two pilot projects underway with two international companies, one of which is a leading brand in the fashion industry. Neither company can yet be named. At the same time, Greewave is looking for additional companies interested in collaborating on pilot projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pilots will demonstrate how the material performs in real-world products and provide Greewave with valuable insights for further developing both the material and the production process. The company is also raising pre-seed capital to finance its next phase of development, conduct additional customer pilots and move step by step towards commercial launch and full-scale production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inkubera provides regional networks and business development support<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Erik Persson is based outside Nora, where the company also has its Swedish base. Greewave first came into contact with Inkubera some time ago, but after continuing to develop independently and making further progress, including producing material samples, the time was right to resume the dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe already have networks at different levels, but above all, we want to build a stronger regional network and gain the business development support that an incubator can provide,\u201d says Erik.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In Gyttorp, Greewave is now building a pilot facility that will take the technology from validated continuous production towards a market-ready product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Setting its sights internationally<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Greewave\u2019s ambitions extend well beyond Sweden. The goal is to start in Europe, where a more robust and regional supply of raw materials is an important part of the value proposition, before expanding internationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe plan is to become an international company. We are starting in Europe, but there are opportunities in many places where forestry or citrus industries are present \u2013 and therefore where raw materials are available and can be put to use,\u201d says Luis<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The immediate priorities are to have more customers test the material and to scale up production. In the longer term, the vision is bigger: to create a new, bio-based value chain for a material that modern society can hardly do without.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rubber is all around us \u2013 in shoes, tyres, sports equipment and countless industrial products. Yet today\u2019s rubber production relies on two raw material sources that come with major challenges: tropical rubber trees and fossil oil. Greewave, a new company joining the Inkubera incubator, wants to change that. Using side streams from the forestry and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":181508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"The company's ambition is therefore to create a new raw material pathway that is both bio-based and can be produced closer to the market","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[16380,13442,10416,19123,19902],"supplier":[19429],"class_list":["post-181488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biobased","tag-biomaterial","tag-circulareconomy","tag-greenfashion","tag-syntheticrubber","supplier-greenwave"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181488"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181517,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181488\/revisions\/181517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181488"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=181488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}