Hya Bioplastics

Hya Bioplastics is a Ugandan company that manufactures biodegradable, home-compostable food packaging from starch-biofibre composites. Its process combines flexible starch inputs such as cassava, potato or wheat starch with plant fibres recovered from agricultural by-products, including banana pseudo-stem fibre, sugarcane bagasse, corn stover, wheat bran and sawdust. The company describes the resulting material as applicable to food packaging, consumer products, cushioning and construction materials, and its product was reported as patent pending as of October 2022.

The current product line covers dry-food packaging: fruit and vegetable trays intended to replace Styrofoam trays used in grocery stores, disposable party plates and takeaway food boxes. Products are sold to grocery stores and food retailers in Uganda. The company has been based at MOTIV, a Kampala makerspace, and has reported moving toward a larger production facility. In addition to selling packaging, it offers its manufacturing equipment to third parties wishing to pilot the technology in other locations, with a stated set-up cost as low as $150,000.

The company positions its material as cost-competitive with conventional plastic and Styrofoam products, in a market where most green packaging sold in Africa is imported from China and India and therefore carries a price premium. It frames demand around single-use plastic bans introduced in roughly 30 of 53 African countries, including partial bans in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya.

Founding story

The venture originated as a student project at Makerere University in Uganda. Team Hya Bioplastics — Dennis Ssekimpi, Pike Kwizera and Musinguzi Mark Musiimenta — placed third in the 2020 Invent for the Planet global competition run by Texas A&M University with a concept for biodegradable alternatives to single-use plastics made from water hyacinth, an invasive aquatic weed in Ugandan waterways. The team subsequently formed a company around the idea and worked with the Halcyon Incubator in Washington, D.C. One account describes the effort as created in 2019 primarily as a research project focused on converting water hyacinth into biodegradable packaging; other profiles give a founding year of 2020. Co-founder Mark Musinguzi, a mechanical engineering graduate of Makerere University, had earlier founded a wastewater treatment and recycling project called Wet Technik in 2018 and was selected as a Halcyon Incubator fellow.

Business model

Hya Bioplastics manufactures and sells compostable packaging products to businesses in Uganda, and additionally offers its containerised, decentralised manufacturing units and equipment for sale so that partners can pilot and operate the technology in other geographies. It buys agricultural by-products from local farming communities — for example paying $1-2 per banana stem — creating an additional income stream for smallholders and a short, localised supply chain.

Revenue comes from the sale of bio-based compostable dry-food packaging products, such as fruit and vegetable trays, disposable party plates and takeaway boxes, to grocery stores, food retailers and other businesses, supplemented by the sale of its manufacturing equipment to parties wishing to pilot the technology.

Traction

The company reported production of about 50-100 trays per day and over $1,000 in revenue during an early three-month production period, later reporting sales of over 500 products per day and scale-up plans toward 3,000 and then over 7,000 units daily. It operated from MOTIV, described as the largest makerspace in Uganda, while preparing to move to a larger production facility, and lists a team size of four.

Latest developments

In 2022 Hya Bioplastics won the grand prize of the Generation Africa GoGettaz Agripreneur Prize competition and was reported to have raised venture funding from Techstars Ventures in July 2022. Its product was patent pending as of October 2022, and investments have been made to scale production capacity to over 7,000 products daily, alongside a planned move to a larger production facility.