Green Tech South West welcomes Neil Morris from Kelpi and Keven Chappell from Pinweld to tell us about their incredible work to transform the ways we use and view plastics.

Today, 8% of the world’s oil is used to make fossil fuel plastics. On current trends, by 2050 that will be 20%. Current estimates of 170 trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans are set to increase 2.6-fold by 2040 and by 2050 mean there is more plastic than fish in the sea (by weight). Recycling will only ever be a part of the solution. Right now just 9% of the world’s plastic is recycled.

Turning the tide on plastic pollution using seaweed

Kelpi was founded to address our plastic problem, by looking at other materials - like seaweed - as the basis for food packaging. In this talk, Neil will tell us the story and science behind Kelpi.

Kelpi has created a coating for paper and card which can match or even exceed the barrier properties of fossil fuel plastics, but in a material that breaks down fully and completely in less than 12 weeks if washed out to sea; that breaks down in compost, where packaging can benefit from higher paper and card recycling rates.

Today Kelpi is already working with some of the largest companies in the world in sectors like food & drink; cosmetics & personal care. As a deep tech start-up, we’ve emerged from a university-based R&D phase into our current commercial pilot and prototyping phase, scaling up to meet the needs of the world’s largest consumers of single-use packaging


Neil is founder and CEO of Kelpi. Neil is a serial entrepreneur (Kelpi is his sixth start-up) moving between start-ups and larger organisations in software, online retail, media and marketing technology. From his last role, as CEO of AI-software business The Filter, to his current role at Kelpi he's experienced the investor climate for software as well as climate tech.

Plastics and sustainability - yes, really!

A discussion centring on the appropriate usage of plastics wouldn’t usually be front of mind. More probably, it would seem diametrically opposed with efforts to promote sustainability.

cover some areas where science and research is supporting appropriate uses and reuse of these materials.

introduce us to the novel plastic welding technology Pinweld,

explain why the Pinweld technology is of use to both industry and the individual alike.

talk through how designers can make conscious decisions to use the knowledge for positive outcomes such as resource management and sustainability.

Keven is an engineer and tech enthusiast who decided to change career to teach maths. However along the way (and to pay for the retraining) he repaired things using a technology he’d devised to weld plastics. It worked well for the repair tasks I had in mind, but other than that, seemed pretty inconsequential. That is until industry researchers learned of it and highlighted it as a solution to something that was continually eluding them for a host of applications.

Aside from that, Keven enjoys making unnecessary things with microcontrollers. He's a fan of learning, enjoying taking courses whenever possible and has never owned a television - maybe the two are connected?

👋 12.30pm - Event starts with a welcome from your meet-up organisers, Ellen, Hannah and Mike

📢 12.35pm - Our famous 60 second intros - a chance for attendees to introduce themselves, ask for help and tell us about something the group might find interesting

🗓️ 1.25pm - Round-up, other community notices and next event announcement

The event will be recorded and will be available along with slides shortly after.

This is a free online event streaming via the CrowdCast platform. You will see the link once you RSVP. The evening before the event, we'll email those that RSVPed with more details about what to expect when using CrowdCast.

This event is made possible by the kind sponsor from:

Inventive ways to make plastics more sustainable with Kelpi and Pinweld