Releaf Paper — an eco-startup from Ukraine that has developed a technology for producing paper from fallen leaves — will soon build its own factory. The team received a grant from the EU in the amount of €2.5 million, the team announced on its Facebook page.

The startup was founded in 2020 by schoolboy Valentyn Frechka from Transcarpathia, and the first sales started within a year. Later, former Lenovo top manager Oleksandr Sobolenko joined the team.

Releaf Paper now produces boxes and bags from fallen leaves and claims that every ton of paper used saves 17 trees from being cut down.

In Ukraine, Releaf Paper’s products were used by L’Oreal, Samsung, Weleda, and Schneider Electric, and since September, customers from Europe have joined them (however, sales there are small at the moment — estimated at thousands of euros per month).

Forbes writes that dozens of people are now involved in the startup team, the staff is planned to double next year, and by the middle of 2024 – to increase to 35 people. The company currently does not have its own facilities, so it used the premises and equipment of the Zhytomyr and later the Lutsk cardboard plant. A grant from the EU will help solve this issue.

Back in December, it looked like Releaf Paper was going to flop for the year. Disrupted logistics, cessation of sales in Ukraine and complete uncertainty about the future. However, we eventually got the result we had been suffering for most of the year. With one strategically successful action, we turned the tide of our battle for survival into triumph. The European Commission was a kind of World Championship for us, where we overcame the qualifications for 7 months, and finally won the main (so far) final in our history by a landslide,” Oleksandr Sobolenko, co-founder of the startup, wrote on Facebook.

The total cost of creating its own factory for Releaf Paper is €3.5 million: €2.5 million will be covered by a grant received under the EIC Accelerator program, another million euros will be received as a loan from a French bank. Implementation of the European Commission program will begin in April 2023, and the startup also received recommendations for further investments in two more factories.

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Among the locations for the construction of the first enterprise: France, Finland and Ukraine. The other two can be built in Germany and Poland.

Previously, Releaf Paper and 16 other Ukrainian startups received financial support from Google. Selected companies based in Ukraine will receive up to $100,000 in equity financing, as well as a Google Mentoring Program, product support, and Google Cloud credits.

• EIC Accelerator is a grant program of the European Commission for small and medium-sized companies, which provides for the financing of innovative developments in the amount of up to 2.5 million euros, as well as full-fledged investments of up to 15 million euros from the EIC Fund. In 2022, the EIC Accelerator issued investment grants to 78 startups for a total amount of €470 million.