Rethinking Plastics at Scale: How Shellworks Is Engineering a Biopolymer Alternative

Global plastic production now exceeds 460 million tons per year, and microplastics are now being detected everywhere from oceans to human tissue. In filtration and membrane science, this is not an abstract issue. It is something that is measured, tracked, and increasingly studied. As the research continues to develop tools to assess the impact on human health and the environment, it is reasonable to also examine what is happening on the materials side. 

Shellworks, a London-based biomaterials company, recently closed a $15 million Series A to scale a plastic alternative called Vivomer. This technology is worth understanding, particularly for researchers and engineers working in environmental monitoring and microplastics analysis, where shifts in material science directly influence what enters the filtration and analytical workflows used to study microplastics. 

Material Science 

Vivomer is a polyhydroxyalkanoate, or PHA, a class of biopolyesters synthesized intracellularly by certain microorganisms as a form of carbon and energy storage. Shellworks produces through microbial fermentation using second-generation feedstocks, specifically waste streams like used cooking oil, rather than food-competing crops. The microbes accumulate PHA granules, which are then extracted and processed into a thermoplastic resin that can be formed using conventional techniques including blow molding.

PHAs have been studied since the 1920s and attracted serious commercial interest since the 1980s. What has historically held them back is production cost and the difficulty of achieving consistent mechanical properties at scale. Shellworks' claim is that six years of process development has moved Vivomer past both of those hurdles, at least relative to comparable rigid packaging materials. 

The biodegradation profile is also worth noting. Unlike PLA (polylactic acid), which requires industrial composting conditions to break down, PHAs can biodegrade in soil and marine environments through enzymatic hydrolysis, This distinction that matters significantly from a lifecycle and environmental fate perspective, and one that has direct relevance to anyone working in environmental monitoring or microplastics research. 

Where Things Stand Commercially 

Shellworks says Vivomer has reached cost parity with glass and aluminum at approximately 5 million units of production. That's a meaningful benchmark, because glass and aluminum are the materials brands typically reach for when they want to move away from plastic, not because they are cheap, but because they are recyclable and consumer-facing. Competing on cost at that volume, before the economics of scale have fully kicked in, is a stronger position than most PHA producers have managed. 

The material is already commercially used. Brands including Wild (Unilever) and Sonsie Skin have launched products in Vivomer packaging, available through Tesco in the UK and Whole Foods in the US. These are real supply chains with real quality requirements, which is a different kind of validation than a lab-scale demonstration. 

The 15-million-dollar Series A, led by Alter Equity, with participation from Nat Friedman of NFDG, JamJar Investments, Founder Collective, and LocalGlobe, will go toward expanding manufacturing capacity in the US and Europe and further developing processing capabilities around blow molding for large format packaging. 

Reference

Vignesh R. "Plastic without plastic: Shellworks' $15M bet on microbe-made packaging." Tech Funding News, 4 March 2026. https://techfundingnews.com/shellworks-15m-series-a-vivomer-plastic-alternative/