From edible bubbles to industrial scale: how Notpla is rethinking packaging

2026-08-11

Most packaging is used for only a few minutes. The material it is made from can remain in the environment for centuries. That contradiction has shaped Notpla from the beginning. The London based company develops natural alternatives to plastic using seaweed and plants. Its ambition is to create materials that perform when needed, then safely return to nature after use.

@Lise Honsinger, Chief Revenue Officer at @Notpla, has been part of that journey almost from the start. She joined when the founders were turning an academic project into a company and became its first employee.

“The issue was never about whether plastic itself was good or bad,” she explains. “It was about why we use something that can last for hundreds of years for a drink consumed in five minutes at a marathon or a wrapper discarded after seconds.”

A simple idea with a powerful message

Notpla grew from the work of founders @Pierre Paslier and @Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, who met while studying Innovation Design Engineering at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.

Both were already interested in the relationship between design, waste and materials. Their research led them to a process once used to make artificial caviar.

From that idea became Ooho, an edible seaweed-based membrane designed to hold liquids. People could drink the contents and eat the packaging or simply allow it to disappear naturally.

The name reflects the reaction the founders often heard when people first saw it.

That sense of surprise helped make Ooho visible, but its importance went further. It demonstrated what Notpla means by truly naturally disappearing packaging.

“If your body can digest the material, nature can digest it too,” says Honsinger.

The Ooho edible seaweed-based membrane designed to hold liquids.

Beyond biodegradable claims

Many packaging products are described as biodegradable or compostable yet still require controlled industrial conditions to break down. If they are buried in a garden, they may remain unchanged for months or even years.

Notpla focuses instead on natural ingredients that are not chemically modified and do not leave any non-natural material behind.

The company wants its materials to behave in the way people expect materials labelled as biodegradable to behave. Once their purpose has been fulfilled, they should disappear without leaving microplastics or harmful residues.

Seaweed is central to that approach.

It is abundant, can grow without agricultural land or fresh water and offers a broad field for innovation. Thousands of species exist, each with different properties and potential applications.

Notpla currently works with brown and red seaweeds, blending them with other plant ingredients to create coatings, films and molded materials.

Moving from spectacle to scale

Turning an eye-catching prototype into a scalable packaging business has required patience.

Ooho worked particularly well at events. In 2019, around 36,000 units filled with Lucozade were distributed during the London Marathon. Then the pandemic closed the event market almost overnight. Notpla continued developing its wider portfolio. One of its most successful innovations now is a seaweed-based coating for paperboard.

Ordinary paper does not naturally resist grease or moisture. Takeaway boxes therefore often contain a hidden plastic layer, even when they appear to be made entirely from cardboard. Notpla replaces that plastic layer with its natural coating.

Notpla takeaway boxes that use a natural coating to resist grease and moisture.

After almost four years of development, the company launched the coating in 2023 and can now apply it on industrial lines running at up to 200 metres per minute. More than 2,000 tonnes of board have been coated to date, and close to 50 million pieces of single use packaging have been replaced.

Working with existing industry

One of the most important lessons has been that new materials are easier to scale when they work with existing machinery.

Notpla’s coated board can run through standard converting equipment. More than ten converters have already used the material, meaning manufacturers can produce boxes without completely redesigning their production systems.

This progress has brought Notpla into stadiums, catering operations and restaurant chains.

Its packaging has been used through companies including Levy, Sodexo and Aramark, and at major sporting events such as Wimbledon and the UEFA World Cup. In the Netherlands, the company works with converter Conpax to bring products to market and Dutch quick service restaurant chain Kwalitaria has now rolled out Notpla-Conpax packaging across their 168 stores.

Notpla packaging used by Dutch quick service chain Kwalitaria and the moment the two companies sealed their collaboration.

Solving the coffee cup problem

The next technical challenge is water resistance. Notpla’s current coating performs strongly against oil and grease, but coffee cups require a much stronger liquid barrier.

Developing a fully waterproof natural coating is therefore a major research focus. The aim is to create a material that can hold coffee, water and soft drinks without relying on plastic.

Honsinger is confident it will happen. “It is now a question of when, not if.”

Becoming a material supplier

In five years, she hopes Notpla will have moved further towards becoming a global material supplier.

Rather than mainly selling finished packaging, the company wants to supply coatings, coated board and mouldable materials directly to paper mills, converters and manufacturers.

That shift would allow Notpla to increase its impact much faster.

Success, however, is not only measured in sales. The company also wants the Notpla name to become recognised as a trusted mark that a product is genuinely natural and not an example of greenwashing.

Building a responsible seaweed supply chain

Growth must not come at the expense of the resource that makes it possible.

Building a secure, traceable and sustainable seaweed supply chain is therefore an important part of Notpla’s future.

That is also one of the reasons the company joined the European Seaweed Association. Notpla is looking for customers, converters, manufacturers and seaweed partners across Europe.

The company began with a small edible bubble that made people stop and say “oo-ho”.

Its next chapter is about making seaweed-based materials ordinary, scalable and trusted enough to replace plastic wherever it is used for only a moment.

Some of the products developed by Notpla.

Want to know more? Visit their website to learn more or reach out to @Lise Honsinger