In the Philippines, an agtech company repurposing coconut waste into biodegradable coolers has raised an unspecified amount of money in a seed funding round. Fortuna Cools says the funds will be used to scale up production of Coconut Cooler, which are meant to replace Styrofoam alternatives used by food distributors.
The funding was led by ADB Ventures, a green investment group within Asian Development Bank. Additional participants include Katapult Ocean Fund, Pasudeco Development Corporation, Manila Angel Investors Network, Nardo Holdings and She1k.
Fortuna Cools hopes to launch a collapsible consumer cooler, dubbed Nutshell Cooler, for food packaging in the near future.
“The Nutshell Cooler is built with our same natural fiber insulation that we’ve developed over the past few years,” CEO and cofounder David Cutler told e27. “But there are various differences in the design to make it suitable for outdoor recreation and casual use, [such as] trips to the beach, weekend getaway, even grocery shopping.”
The coconuts are collected from small Philippine farmers by a conservation group.