How Creapaper Spent Its EIC Accelerator Grant on Grass Paper

Paper is mostly made from trees. Creapaper, a company in Hennef near Bonn, makes it partly from hay. It dries meadow grass, processes it mechanically into pellets it sells as GRASPAP, and supplies them to paper mills that mix them with wood pulp or recycled fibre. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2020 cut-off it won blended finance for Grasspaper, a two-year project to take grass paper into mass-produced packaging and to bring a "100% treeless grass-textile paper" made from grass and textile waste to market, according to CORDIS. The European Commission's list of selected companies names Creapaper, Hennef, alone for the project, with no partner company.

The equity part of the award was paid. The EIC Fund invested €3 million in October 2021 as part of a €20 million Series B led by the US packaging group Ranpak, according to Creapaper's final project report and the round announcement published by its early investor eCAPITAL, and Creapaper is listed in the EIC Fund's portfolio. Retailers including Rewe and Edeka use its paper. The grass-textile paper, however, has never been launched, and the grass content of its paper is still "up to 50%", as it was in 2018.

Where Creapaper Stands Now

Creapaper is operating, but it has gone quiet. Its accounts for 2025 were published on 31 August 2026, three patents in its name were published in March 2026, and no insolvency notice appears in the register, according to North Data, which lists balance sheets from 2013 and profit and loss statements from 2017 but shows the figures only to paying users. Its website imprint names Friedrich Scholta as managing director, as does eCAPITAL's portfolio page. The trade magazine bindereport described the process in September 2025, quoting the company's marketing department. The newest post on the company's own news page is dated September 2023.

The management has turned over. North Data records five changes since the award: Jeanette Thull, appointed in October 2020, left in January 2022; Thomas Joseph Eicher, appointed in September 2022, left in January 2024; Scholta joined in July 2024; founder Uwe D'Agnone ceased to be managing director in November 2024; and Michael Schatzschneider, the finance chief who announced both the EIC award and the Series B, ceased to be managing director in February 2026. The register does not say why, and the company has not explained the changes publicly.

One public number tracks the business from outside. Ranpak, which files annual reports with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, carried its Creapaper stake at $4.5 million at the end of 2024 and $4.8 million at the end of 2025, according to its 2025 annual report; the 2024 report gives the same year-end 2024 figure. The 2025 report says Ranpak accounts for the stake with the equity method, adjusting it by its share of Creapaper's earnings or losses. Ranpak does not disclose its percentage holding or Creapaper's results.

The Technology: Hay Instead of Wood Pulp

About half of the 400 million tonnes of paper made each year is based on wood pulp, and processing the wood consumes "a lot of water, chemicals and energy", the Grasspaper objective says. Creapaper dries grass, often from permanent grassland, and processes it mechanically, without chemical pulping, into fibre pellets that paper mills can run on their existing machines. Its paper comes in grammages from 25 to 350 g/m², according to bindereport, and the visible grass fibres are part of the sales pitch.

The limit is the blend. Grass fibres can replace "up to 50%" of the wood or recycled fibre, according to fibers in process in February 2018, the company's 2023 project report and bindereport in 2025. The rest of every sheet is still wood pulp or recycled paper.

The environmental claims are the company's own, and they vary. The project report says an "independent gate-to-gate LCA" found that making grass fibre emits 95% less CO2 than making wood pulp, while the product claim is "up to 75%" less CO2 for grass paper. On water, the company's 2020 report gives about 2 litres per tonne of grass fibre and its 2023 report gives 6 litres; both compare this with about 6 tonnes of water per tonne of virgin wood pulp. The life-cycle analysis itself has not been published.

What Grasspaper Promised, and What the Record Shows

Grasspaper was Creapaper's second EU grant. A first SME Instrument Phase 2 project, GRASPAP, ran from October 2018 to November 2020 with an EU contribution of €1,930,250 towards a €2,757,500 budget; its final report says the stationary grass fibre plant went into operation and a mobile processing unit was designed, built and commissioned. In July 2022 the company presented Greenkeeper, a machine that turns dried hay into compressed fibre raw material in the field.

Grasspaper itself ran from 1 February 2021 to 31 January 2023, on time, with an EU contribution of €1,498,875 towards a total cost of €2,141,250, according to CORDIS. Creapaper had announced a €1.7 million grant in December 2020, a figure eCAPITAL repeated; the reason for the gap to the signed amount is not public.

The final report claims progress on conversion: a partnership with what it calls one of Europe's largest paper cup producers to process a grass paper coffee cup, and an adjusted paper smoothness so that a "well-known chocolate brand" could run grass paper on standard converting machines for vegan chocolate packaging. Neither partner is named, and no cup or chocolate product has been announced by name since. The report adds the online shop launched in June 2022 and lists Rewe, Edeka, Coop and TeeGschwendner as users of grass paper.

1. Adapt converting machines for mass productionPartly deliveredCup and chocolate packaging trials reported on CORDIS; partners and launched products not named.
2. 100% treeless grass-textile paper to market readinessNot achievedNot mentioned in the final report; no launch announced by the company or anyone else.
3. Grass paper products to replace straws, cups and bagsPartly deliveredFood and carrier bags and hygiene papers placed with retailers, per the CORDIS report; a straw utility model published in 2025, per North Data, but no straw or cup on sale found.
4. Raise the grass share of grass paperNot achievedStill "up to 50%" in 2025, per bindereport, the same as in 2018.
5. Fast scale-up with new capitalDelivered€20 million Series B closed in October 2021.

The textile paper is the clearest gap. It was the "next stage" of the commercial strategy in the project objective, and it is the one result that would have taken Creapaper beyond a 50% grass blend. The final report does not mention it at all.

What Creapaper Has Achieved Since the Award

The capital came quickly. The Series B was announced on 6 October 2021 with Ranpak, JS Capital, Schusterman Family Investments, Soros Capital and the EIC Fund as new shareholders and eCAPITAL co-investing, according to eCAPITAL and Silicon Canals. Ranpak's 2021 annual report dates its investment to September 2021 and says the amounts of its 2021 deals, Creapaper included, are "immaterial" to the report. "This EUR 20m series B is a quantum leap for Creapaper," Schatzschneider said at the time.

The register shows each round. Share capital rose in steps from €25,000 in 2013 to €69,707 in October 2021, and then a hundredfold to €6,970,700 in September 2022, according to North Data. In 2024 the company filed 16 trademark notices at the EU trademark office for names such as "Paludi-Papier" and "Paludi-Gras", which point to grass from rewetted peatland; bindereport says the company sources grass from permanent grassland and moor areas. In December 2022 it said it had been named one of the EIC's "Green Centaurs" in the EIC Impact Report 2022, a claim repeated in the CORDIS report.

What cannot be checked is the scale of the business. Creapaper has never published revenue, tonnage or staff numbers, the figures in its filed accounts are behind a paywall at North Data, and none of the customers named by the company has disclosed volumes.

Why Europe Should Care

Grass paper sits between two EU laws. The Single-Use Plastics Directive took effect on 3 July 2021, restricting some single-use plastic items and pushing others towards alternatives, the opening that Creapaper's GRASPAP report said it planned to use. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, in force since 11 February 2025 and applicable from 12 August 2026, aims to make all packaging recyclable by 2030 and to cut the use of virgin materials. A fibre that is grown locally, needs no chemical pulping and replaces part of the virgin wood pulp fits both aims, and peatland grass would add a use for rewetted land.

The Verdict

Creapaper has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.