KfW Capital
A start-up comes of age
The start-up Traceless Materials is about the big picture. The Hamburg-based company has declared war on global plastic pollution. Team spirit, tenacity and solid finances are the company’s success formula. The launch of a production demo plant will be a major milestone in 2025.
Anne Lamp, CEO and co-founder of Traceless
‘Our motivation is a sense of basic trust in the good, and that is what keeps driving us.’
Five years after it started, the commitment of the Traceless team is as strong as on the first day. ‘What motivates me is that I’m convinced we can stop plastic pollution and the climate crisis. We just need to put our ideas and innovations into practice. We are working on a project that is 100 per cent good and not just a bit less bad,’ said CEO and co-founder Anne Lamp. The basis for the project is a natural polymer material that vanishes in the environment without leaving a trace – after two to nine weeks. Hence the name Traceless. The feedstock is made up of agricultural waste, which is available in virtually unlimited supply. It is an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional synthetics.
The start-up will reach a critical milestone when the demonstration plant is launched in 2025, and the staff are waiting impatiently for that day to come. The plant is half the size of a football pitch and will have a production capacity of a few thousand tonnes of granulate. The next expansion phase will then be the industrial plant, which is to be commissioned in 2028. That will increase capacity thirty-fold. ‘We want the industrial plant to achieve significant economies of scale, and we want to start generating profits relatively quickly,’ said Chief Financial Officer Jakob Röskamp.
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Chief Financial Officer Jakob Röskamp
‘The only way to get through what is known as the ‘valley of death’, the growth phase of a start-up, is to have partners that understand and share the vision.’
Enthusiasm is surely an important prerequisite for turning a project into reality. But success also depends on having sufficient funds. Chief Financial Officer Röskamp shed light on the financing mix of EUR 36.6 million, which is made up of equity, debt capital and grants. ‘On the equity side, Finland’s United Bankers FFIG, SWEN Blue Ocean of France, the German venture capital provider High-Tech Start-up Fund as well as Planet A Ventures and b.value participated in the Series A financing. Close partnerships are important on the financing side, and for Traceless this also applies to the next funding round. The only way to get through what is known as the ‘valley of death’, the growth phase of a start-up, is to have partners that understand and share the vision.’
KfW Capital participates in Traceless indirectly via the VC funds HTGF and Planet A. ‘KfW Capital invests in, among other things, climate tech funds. In order to make the sustainable transformation a success and solve the problem of global plastic pollution, for example, we also need innovative tech solutions in the field of circular economy’, said Dr Jörg Goschin, CEO of KfW Capital. KfW Capital has so far invested more than EUR 2.5 billion in 134 VC funds, one fifth of which invest in green tech.
The debt capital for the funding round was provided by GLS Bank and Hamburger Sparkasse.
Significant economies of scale through new demonstration plant
The start-up will reach a critical milestone when the demonstration plant is launched in 2025.
The team has learned that plans are there to be changed. Röskamp admits that they underestimated how complex it was to obtain Series A finance, for example, when they had no turnover from production to speak of. There were challenges, but they never thought of giving up.
According to co-founder Lamp, Traceless' mission is very simple. ‘We want to create a real impact against plastic waste worldwide.’ Her motivation has always been that things can be done differently. ‘While studying process engineering, I asked myself what I was actually doing here. I'm being trained to produce pesticides. I said to myself: I don't want to do that. Then I read about circular production methods and that was a key moment for the start of the mission,’ says Lamp.
The circular economy as a model
Against plastic pollution and the climate crisis
The basis for Traceless is a natural polymer material that vanishes in the environment without leaving a trace – after two to nine weeks.
According to co-founder Lamp, the mission of Traceless is very simple. ‘We want to make a real impact against global plastic pollution. Our motivation was always that you can do things completely differently. While I was doing my degree course in process engineering I asked myself, what exactly am I doing here? I’m being trained to produce pesticides. Then I said to myself: I don’t want that. Then I read about circular production processes, and that was the turning point for the start of the mission’, said Lamp.
With the new plant, Traceless is also expanding its circle of partners. So far, the team has worked with the e-commerce company OTTO and the retailer C&A, for example, and the packaging manufacturer Mondi is another important partner. The latter coats paper with Traceless material. The start-up has no fear of imitators, since five patents have been applied for, which protects its business model quite comprehensively already. And they have obviously gained a lot of process expertise by now. Besides, the new approach to using and bringing natural polymers to market does not play any role at all for established chemical companies.
The Traceless managers have also been able to gather experience with policymakers. In 2023, co-founder Lamp was invited to the chemicals summit at the Federal Chancellery in Berlin. At the time, large industrial corporations demanded lower energy prices more than anything. ‘But I wanted to see an honest roadmap for transforming the chemical industry. Not much has happened since then. I now expect the new federal government to take the topic of industrial transformation seriously and formulate ambitious targets and pathways to achieving them’, demands Lamp. But she is also aware that they cannot solve the problem alone and that many companies would have to pull together.
Co-founder Lamp also knows why, five years after the launch of the company, they have an unwavering commitment to work hard. ‘Our motivation is a sense of basic trust in the good, and that is what keeps driving us. We find solutions, but implementing our ideas is crucial. What is important is that you convince more and more people to join on this journey.’
Published on KfW Stories on 6 May 2025.
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