EIC Accelerator Report Card: Woodio's Waterproof Wood Sinks

Ceramic washbasins and toilets are fired in kilns for hours at more than 1,000 degrees Celsius, usually with natural gas. Woodio, a Finnish start-up, cast them instead from aspen chips and resin at room temperature, and sold the result as the world's first fully waterproof wood composite. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's October 2020 cut-off the European Commission selected its project WOODRY for blended finance, and CORDIS records an EU grant of €2,492,000 towards a €3,560,000 project to move Woodio from small-scale manual production to an automated factory.

The factory came, two years late and as a separate investment. Woodio moved production to a new plant in Lahti in May 2025, according to its 2024 sustainability report. On 18 May 2026 the Helsinki District Court declared the company bankrupt, according to Yle and the company's own bankruptcy notice. Its revenue had never reached €1 million a year.

A Bankruptcy Twelve Months After the Factory Opened

Woodio filed its bankruptcy petition at the Helsinki District Court on Friday 15 May 2026, citing insolvency, according to Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, which found the petition in the insolvency register. Metsälehti, summarising Kauppalehti, which broke the story, reported that the failure of its latest funding round was behind the decision. Rakennuslehti headlined that its financiers' faith had faded. The court declared the company bankrupt on 18 May and appointed attorney Heikki Vesa of Krogerus as trustee, according to Woodio's notice. The Finnish Trade Register (PRH) lists the company in bankruptcy from 18 May 2026 and shows its VAT, prepayment and employer registrations ending the same day.

The petition names LähiTapiola, Finnvera and Tekes (now Business Finland) as the largest creditors, with loans totalling about €7 million, plus about €3 million of capital loans from five other lenders, Yle reported. The factory hall of just under 5,000 square metres in Lahti's Jokimaa district, built for Woodio by the city's property company Spatium, is now on the city's hands, according to Etelä-Suomen Sanomat. Woodio's website no longer loads. No sale of the business, the brand or the production line had been reported by 18 October 2026.

The Technology: Wood Chips in a Mould

Lahtinen told the Finnish engineers' union TEK that the material began as an accident at a university Christmas party, when he and another researcher mixed wood chips and a biodegradable plastic in a coffee cup. The patented result is about 80% wood and bio-based material and the rest resin, he said. Dezeen described it as 80% wood chips by volume, from aspen and Finnish forest-industry offcuts, bound with fossil-based polyester and bioplastic resins and cast in patented moulds without heat. Woodio used it for more than 20 washbasin models, wall-hung toilets, bathtubs and sheet material for worktops, according to a 2025 profile distributed by STT.

The climate case is the point of the product, and the numbers moved. The WOODRY report on CORDIS says the carbon footprint of Woodio products is "over 80 % smaller" than ceramic and stone equivalents. Dezeen quoted a claim of "99 per cent fewer emissions" in production, but noted that this left out sourcing and disposal, and that the composite is "almost impossible to recycle". In October 2025 Woodio said new third-party verified Environmental Product Declarations showed a footprint up to 80% lower than comparable ceramic or stone products, and 90% lower in manufacturing a washbasin, with up to 50% bio-based binder, according to its EPD announcement. Products at the end of their life could be burned for energy or crushed for use in cement.

What WOODRY Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of companies selected in the October 2020 EIC Accelerator pilot cut-off names Woodio Oy of Helsinki as the only beneficiary of WOODRY, with blended finance, that is a grant plus EIC equity. The grant agreement was signed on 19 February 2021, and the project ran from 1 March 2021 to 31 October 2023. Its objective on CORDIS states: "The biggest innovation of the WOODRY project will be automation of Woodio production", allowing the company to scale up "to an automated industrial factory, which will significantly reduce manufacturing costs".

The final periodic report shows that the project designed the factory rather than building it. Most of the effort went into concept design with an outside engineering consultancy, output and cost simulations, technical design of critical process steps and site and permit planning. The result was a two-step plan with rising automation and estimates of site, operating cost, capital cost and floor space; engineering, equipment selection and "a full investment proposal" were listed as next steps. The report adds that a starch filler could "significantly lower the consumption of resin", the most expensive raw material, and says the project "progressed as planned and within budget". It also says Woodio sold sanitaryware to 26 countries in 2021 and expected to be "established" in the Nordic markets by the end of the project.

A CORDIS Results in Brief article quotes chief financial officer Olli Arojärvi saying the company was "now prepared for commercial-scale production", had added panels and solid surfaces to its range, and aimed for its products to be "carbon negative" by 2025.

1. Design an automated factoryDeliveredTwo-step concept, cost and site estimates, per the CORDIS report.
2. Move to automated industrial productionLateLahti plant with higher automation started in May 2025, 19 months after the project ended.
3. Significantly lower manufacturing costsNot shownNo cost figures published; operating loss of €2.69M on €606k revenue in 2024.
4. Less resin, more bio-based contentPartlyUp to 50% bio-based binder by October 2025; starch filler use not confirmed.
5. Established in Nordic marketsNot announcedNo market share published; exports went mainly to the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.
6. Carbon-negative products by 2025MissedOctober 2025 EPDs show a footprint up to 80% lower than ceramics, not negative.

What Woodio Achieved After the Award

The money arrived. In June 2023 Woodio announced €16.3 million in growth funding led by UB Forest Industry Green Growth Fund (UB FIGG) and the European Innovation Council, with existing investors, taking its total raised to €27 million, according to ArcticStartup and Tech Funding News. The EIC's own success story says Woodio received €7.5 million from the EIC Accelerator and that the round was led by UB FIGG and the EIC Fund; Lahtinen also gave the €7.5 million figure to TEK. CORDIS shows only the €2.49 million grant, and no source opened for this article itemises the equity. Woodio does not appear among the 319 organisations on the EIC Fund's official list of invested companies, checked page by page on 18 October 2026.

In April 2024 Woodio announced a factory in Lahti costing about €7 million, to open in spring 2025 with a higher level of automation, according to Renewable Carbon News, which quoted UB FIGG managing partner Matti Lehtipuu as a board member and described UB FIGG as the main shareholder. The City of Lahti said the plant was expected to create about 100 jobs by 2030. Production moved there from Konala in Helsinki in May 2025, according to the sustainability report and the STT profile, and the trade register shows the Lahti address from September 2025.

Recognition kept coming. Woodio won design awards including the Fennia Prize and a Design Plus award, according to Tech Funding News and CORDIS, and received the Metsä360 award in November 2025, according to Maaseudun Tulevaisuus; the STT profile names LUT University and the Marjatta and Eino Kolli Foundation as its donors. Its products were shown at a wood exhibition in London in March 2026, Yle reported. Customers named in public material include The Usual hotel in Rotterdam, in the STT profile, and Gail's bakery in London, on Woodio's site.

The Money

Woodio's filed accounts, summarised by Suomen Asiakastieto, show revenue rising from €290,000 in 2020 to €870,000 in 2023 before falling 30.3% to €606,000 in 2024, while the operating loss was between €1.61 million and €2.91 million every year. TEK's 2023 article gives the same 2021 revenue of €367,000 and about €600,000 for 2022. The equity ratio was 19% in 2024 with capital loans counted as debt. The STT profile put revenue at about €700,000 to €800,000 in October 2025; no 2025 accounts were public by 18 October 2026.

Staff numbers barely moved while the company raised money and built a factory: 25 people in 2020, 30 in 2022 and 2023, and 27 in 2024.

Why Europe Should Care

Woodio fits two EU priorities at once. The WOODRY report notes that Europe's ceramics industry, highly dependent on cheap natural gas, was struggling to keep production running after the recent geopolitical crisis. A product made at room temperature from forest by-products is exactly what the Commission's bioeconomy strategy of 27 November 2025 wants to scale, with lead markets for bio-based materials and public and private investment for bio-based innovations.

The case also shows the limit of that support. The EIC, a Finnish state lender, Business Finland, a forest-industry fund and the city of Lahti all backed Woodio, and the factory was finished. What never arrived was enough demand for premium wooden washbasins to cover the costs, and the next funding round failed with sales still below €1 million a year.

The Verdict

Woodio's trustee and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.