Woodly joins European Alliance to make bio-based materials a mainstream choice
Woodly has been welcomed as a founding member of the European Commission’s Bio-based Europe Alliance, an initiative bringing producers, material suppliers and buyers together to grow the market for bio-based materials and products.
The Alliance aims to build more reliable demand, helping businesses plan production and purchasing with greater confidence. It’s ambition is to bring together EU companies collectively purchasing €10 billion worth of bio-based materials, products and applications by 2030. The formal launch takes place at the Global Bioeconomy Summit in Dublin on 21 October 2026.
“We’re pleased to be involved from the start and to help shape how the Alliance works. We bring experience from fresh food packaging, where material choices can make a real difference to how long food stays fresh and how much goes to waste,” says Jonathan Edmunds, CEO of Woodly.
Founding membership gives Woodly an opportunity to contribute to the Alliance’s ways of working and possible purchasing guidelines. We want those discussions to reflect the questions our customers face when choosing packaging: how it performs, how it fits their operations, what it costs and the value it can protect.
A packaging manufacturer considering a bio-based material needs confidence that customers will buy the resulting packaging. A retailer needs to know that it will protect the product, be available in the volumes required and make commercial sense. These decisions depend on one another: manufacturers need a clearer picture of future orders, while buyers need reliable supply before they can commit.
The Alliance offers a way for suppliers and buyers to work through those needs together. For customers, the potential benefit is bio-based options that are easier to assess and source, with producers better able to plan for demand.
“In fresh food, purchasing decisions should also account for what the packaging helps preserve. More saleable time can mean fewer markdowns for a retailer, greater flexibility for a grower or packer, and less food wasted. Those benefits deserve
consideration alongside the price of the pack and the material it is made from,” says Sean Fortune, CCOO at Woodly.
Our ambition at Woodly is to make shelf-life-extending packaging the standard for fresh food. That takes a market in which manufacturers can plan for demand and buyers have the confidence to change materials. Through the Alliance, we have an opportunity to help shape that market across Europe, bringing our vision of more fresh food reaching people into the decisions that determine which materials become part of everyday life.
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