Andrea Bonilla, founder of Bioplaster, joins Sunny Ray to trace her path from a childhood fascination with microscopes to a nanotechnology degree in Puebla and a physics PhD at Oxford, where she studied magnetic nanomaterials and crowdfunded part of her tuition. The conversation turns to the moment on a Cancun beach, overwhelmed with invasive sargassum algae, that inspired her to found Bioplaster in Merida, Mexico. Andrea explains why sargassum is a difficult raw material due to heavy metal absorption and seasonal variability, and describes how her R&D lab extracts colorants, food additives, cellulose, and fertilizer before producing biodegradable packaging films, a styrofoam alternative, threads, and paper substitutes. She discusses raising 1.5 million dollars in seed funding, now pursuing a 14 million dollar Series A to build a bio-refinery, and securing letters of intent worth over 5 million dollars from companies including IKEA suppliers. Recognized by MIT Technology Review and 3M, Andrea reflects on the challenges of fundraising as a female LATAM founder and shares her five-year vision for scaling sargassum-based biomaterials across the Caribbean.
A Oxford-trained physicist turns invasive Caribbean seaweed into biodegradable packaging, chasing a 14 million dollar bet.
Can you tell us about the beach moment that sparked Bioplaster?
I had just come back from Oxford and went to Cancun with friends, including Danielle, who is now my associate. There was so much sargassum invading the beach that a friend asked if it could be a raw material instead of trash. I had worked with alginates and algae extracts during my PhD, so I immediately thought we could extract materials from it, though I wasn't thinking specifically about bioplastics yet.
Why is sargassum such a complicated raw material to work with?
Sargassum is a bioindicator, so it soaks up heavy metals like arsenic and lead as it travels through ocean currents, which is risky since some extracts go into food products. It also isn't cultivated, so it varies a lot depending on when it's collected. Sargassum from March is very different from June, so standardizing our products has been a long journey.
How much have you raised, and what's next for Bioplaster?
At our seed stage we raised a bit over 1.5 million dollars. We're now raising our Series A, which is a 14 million dollar round, to set up our bio-refinery. It's not fully public yet, but that's where we're headed to scale production.
What does Bioplaster make today, and how does the process work?
We're upscaling flexible packaging films for bags, stretch film, and palletization, which we'll start producing in the next two months. We also have an elastic styrofoam alternative for shock absorption and insulation, plus threads, hydrogels, and colorants. The algae goes through a refinery-like process where we extract colorants, food additives like fucoidans and alginates, then cellulose and fertilizer, which feed into our bioplastics.
What does having over 5 million dollars in letters of intent from companies like IKEA suppliers mean for you?
It's been crucial because what VCs want is reduced risk. The packaging industry requires kilograms of material for trials before anyone signs a contract, so getting there from the lab is very hard. Working with companies like IKEA to optimize our materials for their specific applications shows real interest, and that's what these letters of intent represent.
What was one of the hardest moments in Bioplaster's early days?
Initially it was hard to find a story investors would buy. I'm a researcher, so I spoke very scientifically. I was also running several different products and projects at once because research isn't linear, but VCs saw that as too risky and unfocused. It was hard to close our first pre-seed round until my associate Danielle joined with a business background, and things started moving faster.
Where do you see Bioplaster in five years?
Hopefully we're setting up another bio-refinery somewhere else in the Caribbean, not just near Cancun, so we can process more than 100,000 tons of dry sargassum per year. If our projections hold, both the films and the threads should be commercially available by then. Fingers crossed.
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