Developing a late-stage manufacturing prototype of a low cost, high performance, circular/sustainable Respirator for Healthcare, Industrial and Civic (Public Health) procurement.
ModlaPPE is developing a late-stage, manufacturing prototype of a new, advanced, high-performance respirator for use in healthcare, medical, industrial and construction sectors -- which would be 80% cheaper than disposables, 90% smaller and is also 100% recyclable (unlike disposables).
After 2 years of iteration, with hundreds of different Mask versions and Filter combinations, the product has passed all key performance data requirements and has also been well received by target market participants (nurses, doctors, dentists and construction professionals).
Now, the team at ModlaPPE wish to develop a late-stage manufacturing prototype, to stress test the product, to further evaluate the technical performance data and enhance the commercial case to prospective investors.
The early-stage R&D work on this product suggests that it would be the lowest cost, most resource efficient (1g weight vs. 13g disposables), most robust and longest lasting respirator on the market -- certainly with a filtration efficiency above 95% (ours is currently achieving 99.92% Particle Filtration Efficiency). It would also represent the first fully Circular Design / Circular Economy product in the PPE sector globally; a transformational development in a $100bn p.a. market which typically prioritises primary function far ahead of any sustainability or circular economy considerations in design.
The Fast Grant project award is critical for ModlaPPE at this juncture. The PPE sector and Hardware (more generally) are hugely underserved by conventional private and venture capital ecosystems, and yet these areas are desperately in need of innovations like ours, to catalyse a broader change in the industry. The regulatory landscape is complex, product development requires deep technical and engineering knowledge, access to expensive labs and too few people (as well as other start-ups) seem to be tackling the problems. The innovations we are creating at ModlaPPE, are tackling, head-on, the problems of waste, cost and performance in PPE.
We have a duty to showcase this product and give it a place in the market. Procurement teams globally, need to have the option to buy in to the Circular Economy for PPE -- which they do not at present. The team at ModlaPPE plan to use the transformational unit economics, to help accelerate that behaviour change in the industry -- making a new, circular product so comparatively cheap, that Procurement professionals worldwide take notice.