TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Finnish start-ups eye Indonesia as market for green products
Finnish start-ups have been turning their eyes to Southeast Asia’s largest economy, Indonesia, to market ecological products and sound out investment opportunities, amid Finland’s ambitious vision to become the world’s leading green economy by 2030
Change Size
F
span>Finnish start-ups have been turning their eyes to Southeast Asia’s largest economy, Indonesia, to market ecological products and sound out investment opportunities, amid Finland’s ambitious vision to become the world’s leading green economy by 2030.
The Nordic country hosted the 3rd World Circular Economy Forum in Helsinki earlier this month, which brought together more than 2,200 business leaders, policymakers, researchers and innovators with a shared concern for sustainability.
The three-day forum, held amid the country’s launch of a new government Cabinet and an ambitious climate-goal package to make Finland a carbon-neutral country by 2030, facilitated stakeholders in exploring partnerships to create a profitable production cycle that minimizes carbon or toxic waste — called a circular economy.
On the sidelines of the annual event, which previously was held in Helsinki and Yokohama, Japan, a Finnish packaging start-up, Sulapac, expressed its interest in expanding to Southeast Asia, including Indonesia — a country that, according to Science magazine, is the largest marine polluter after China.
Sulapac marketing and communication director Antii Valtonen said that, with a rapidly growing middle-income population, which the Indonesian government predicts will reach 140 million in 2020, Indonesia was an attractive market for the award-winning producer.
Sulapac, which received an unrevealed sum of investment from France-based fashion giant Chanel last December, was named one of the “top-100 hottest start-ups” in Europe by British bimonthly magazine Wired UK last year.
While ecological products could be expensive and, thus, challenging to sell in developing countries, Antii was optimistic that Indonesia’s market would soon be “mature enough” to create demand for Sulapac’s degradable products, which range from disposable straws to cosmetic containers. The demand, therefore, would lead to more reasonable prices.
“It is just a matter of time before Indonesia’s market is mature enough for ecological products, like Sulapac’s,” Antii said in a presentation on Tuesday. “If production volumes grow [in line with demand], the price can also be pressed.”
In addition, Sulapac’s products — which are made from “wood chips, dust and renewable natural binders” — were “very comparable” and “not more expensive” than conventional plastic ones, Antii said. He claimed they were degradable within two years. However, the straws, which are designed to substitute single-use plastic ones, would break within two days to two weeks, depending on usage.
Separately, a Finnish ecological textile technology start-up, Infinited Fiber — which has been working with large apparel brands like Adidas, H&M and GAP, as well as Swedish furniture firm Ikea — explained that Indonesia played an important role in circular-economy-based textile production.
The country, home to factory partners of large global apparel brands, could contribute to reducing waste from the textile industry, such as dye residue that has made the Citarum River in West Java — with hundreds of textile factories lining its shores — the most polluted river in the world, according to Greenpeace.
Infinited Fiber, which produces machines that turn textile waste into cotton-like fiber to be reused, was keen to work with factories in Indonesia to sustain the business while tackling the issue, said the startup’s CEO Petri Alava.
“However, we understand that factories in Indonesia are the fourth-tier stakeholder, while the kings are the big brands. Therefore, we have been approaching these names, and some of them welcomed us well,” Petri said.
“Nonetheless, we are just a step away from sealing a deal with an Indonesian company. It wants to invest in us and, thus, we will soon bring our technology to Indonesia,” he said, declining to reveal the company’s name but describing it as “a large Indonesian paper company”.
Bijaksana Junerosano, an Indonesian social entrepreneur and a cofounder of the Indonesia Circular Economy Forum, echoed Antii’s statements, saying the opportunity for ecological products in the Southeast Asia archipelago was huge.
According to Sano, as he is better known, Indonesia sustains economic losses of around Rp 75 billion (US$5.3 million) daily, or Rp 27.3 trillion annually, from waste management based on the linear economy, in which raw materials are treated for single use.
Although it might be a loss to Indonesia currently, it could be a huge opportunity in the future, if Indonesian or other stakeholders with concern for the ecology and sustainability start partnerships to change the ongoing habits.
“If we change the basis of how we treat waste with the circular economy, Indonesia’s economic growth can increase by Rp 27.3 trillion per year,” said Sano, who is also the initiator of an ecological community movement called Waste4Change.
