Transforming old cardboard boxes into insulation nets CleanFiber $10 million round
I’ve been thinking of cutting up old cardboard boxes to line the bottom of the coop. They will protect the ground below from getting wet and rotted down. But then I read about a company in Europe, called CleanFiber, that turns old cardboard into insulation nets for use in buildings! They claim their product is cheaper and more efficient than other solutions on the market today.
“Seven years ago, I was looking for a way to recycle boxes,” says the company’s founder and CEO, David Anderson. “I tried to do green energy but the costs were too high. Then I came up with this idea.”
Anderson spent months of research and development working with a team of experts in Scandinavia, but in 2011 he decided to move his company to Portugal where labor is cheaper.
Today, he has 20 people working in his factory in the outskirts of Porto. He says his team is capable of producing nine different versions and types of insulation nets. They can be used in houses, greenhouses and even hotels!
“We take the old cardboard and cut it into small squares measuring about 13 inches wide by 13 inches tall by 13 inches deep,” Anderson explains. “These squares are then filled with cement to create a net shell.”
“You can put them in the walls, in the ceiling and on the floors. In houses, we use them as linings for vertical surfaces.” He says they are also used to insulate pipes that run across exterior walls. “They can be used anywhere you want to increase insulation or just as a sound barrier,” he adds.
The net costs about $10 per square meter and lasts for about 20 years which is significantly longer than other solutions on the market today.
“At the moment we produce a very low number of nets. But we are planning to increase our production and reach a market of around 2,500 square meters per month by the end of this year. It will be enough to satisfy demand in Portugal,” Anderson says.
Although his company has been producing insulation nets for about 4 years, CleanFiber is still relatively small when compared with other European companies that produce recycled packaging.
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