traceless materials wants to replace plastic and bioplastic in products that easily end up in the environment. The Hamburg company, founded in 2020 by Anne Lamp and Johanna Baare, extracts natural polymers from residues of agricultural processing and turns them into granules, films and coatings without chemically modifying them, so the material behaves like plastic in use but composts in nature.
The European Innovation Council granted €2,425,149 towards a two-year, €3.46 million market entry project. Since then the company has raised €36.6 million in equity and debt, won a €5.1 million grant from the German environment ministry and, in May 2026, opened a plant in Hamburg with capacity for about 3,000 tonnes a year. It is a real industrial start. It is also a year later than planned, and the big plant is still to come.
Company file
- Legal entity
- traceless materials GmbH, Hamburg
- Founded
- 2020
- Founders
- Anne Lamp (CEO), Johanna Baare
- Product
- Compostable natural-polymer granules, films and coatings
- Named partners
- Mondi, OTTO, Biesterfeld, C&A
- Investors
- UB FIGG, SWEN Blue Ocean, Planet A Ventures, HTGF, b.value; debt from GLS Bank and Hamburger Sparkasse
- EIC project
- MaEtra, 1 Jan 2022 to 31 Dec 2023, closed
- Staff
- About 110 (May 2026)
Where traceless Stands Today
On 13 May 2026 traceless opened its first production facility, in a former industrial bakery in Hamburg-Harburg, with about 4,000 square metres and capacity for around 3,000 tonnes of material a year. The company said the investment exceeded €20 million, including €5,128,401 from the federal environment ministry's Environmental Innovation Programme, and that it employed about 110 people. Packaging Europe and biooekonomie.de covered the plant. Chief executive Anne Lamp called it "the world's first industrial production capacities for thermoplastic natural polymers that can be used directly as plastic substitutes".
Named partners include the packaging group Mondi, the retailer OTTO and the distributor Biesterfeld; a KfW profile in 2025 also listed C&A. Applications named by the company are single-use items, packaging, paper coatings and adhesives. We found no published sales volumes or revenue.
The Technology: Natural Polymers, Not New Plastics
traceless' patent, listed on CORDIS, covers a "process for producing water-resistant films from corn gluten meal". According to the 2021 EIC announcement reported by EU-Startups, the materials use residues that do not compete with food, need no harmful additives, and, being neither chemically modified nor synthetically polymerised, were expected not to fall under the EU's plastics rules. That regulatory point matters: the EU's single-use plastics directive restricts many products made of plastic, including some bioplastics.
"We want to create a real impact against plastic waste worldwide."
Anne Lamp, CEO, traceless, to KfW, 2025What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows
MaEtra ran from January 2022 to December 2023. The CORDIS results page lists three trademark registrations and one patent application, and otherwise "no results available": no report on production, customers or certification. The public record of what the project achieved therefore comes from the company, not the EU.
- Market entryPartialNamed partners and pilot products; no disclosed sales volumes.
- Industrial productionDelivered3,000-tonne plant opened in May 2026, after the project.
- Financing the scale-upDelivered€36.6M Series A and €5.1M ministry grant.
- Published project resultsNoneCORDIS shows only trademarks and a patent.
What Has Happened Since the Award
The plant arrived later than expected. The KfW profile, published in May 2025, gave 2025 for a demonstration plant and 2028 for an industrial plant with 30 times more capacity. The Hamburg plant opened in May 2026. The profile also quoted the company saying it had underestimated how hard a Series A would be without production revenue.
The Money
The Series A, announced on 25 September 2023, was led by United Bankers' Forest Industry Green Growth Fund and SWEN Capital Partners' Blue Ocean fund, with debt from GLS Bank and Hamburger Sparkasse and existing investors Planet A Ventures, HTGF and b.value, according to traceless and United Bankers. The 2021 EIC announcement spoke of a grant "and equity investment" from the EIC, but the EIC Fund is not named among the Series A investors and we found no record of its investment.
What cannot be checked
Whether the EIC's announced equity was ever invested, how much of the €36.6M was debt, and what traceless sells are not public. The CO₂ saving claim rose from up to 87% in 2021 to 91% in 2026 without a published life-cycle assessment we could find.
Why Europe Should Care
The EU wants less plastic in single-use products and a larger bio-based industry. traceless offers both: a material from European agricultural residues, made in Germany, that its makers say sits outside plastics regulation. Its partners include a major European packaging group, which is where the volume would come from.
What the project promised
Market entry for a compostable, additive-free plastic substitute from agricultural residues.
What the record shows
A 3,000-tonne plant, €36.6M raised and big-name partners, but no published sales or project results, and no trace of the EIC equity.
The Verdict
Built the plant, now needs the market
The EIC backed traceless early, and the company went on to raise over fifteen times the grant from investors and banks and to build a plant. That is the path the EIC exists to open. What remains unproven is demand: 3,000 tonnes is tiny next to the plastics it aims to replace, and the 2028 industrial plant will need customers the public cannot yet see.
traceless materials has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.
