ChopValue Founder and CEO Felix Böck
ChopValue, a Canadian startup designing and manufacturing products using an innovative, high-performance material engineered from recycled chopsticks, has closed a US$7.7 million funding round.
Two unnamed high-profile technology entrepreneurs with expansion interests in Asia Pacific and Europe led the round. Several corporate VC funds and existing investors (VC funds in the climate-tech space and institutional investors such as EDC and BDC) also participated.
The funds will be used to expand ChopValue’s operations, mainly to serve B2B partnerships better. The focus will be on increasing production capacity and developing new product lines.
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ChopVaue, which has a significant presence in Singapore, also plans to invest in research and development to optimise its micromanufacturing principles and reduce its environmental footprint.
ChopValue was founded in 2016 by Felix Böck. It says its “urban harvesting” approach has saved over 100 million chopsticks from landfill, turning them into sustainable products. It has thus far recycled and upcycled 100 million chopsticks – turning them into pieces of furniture and home elements. It has recycled around 10 million chopsticks in Singapore alone since the opening of its first local micro-factory in 2021.
Its decentralised micro-factory approach uses local resources for local production to meet local demand and enables small business owners to own local ChopValue franchises.
The company has created over 150 jobs across six countries through 63 in-development franchises. It has stored over 136,000+kg of carbon into new products from material collected by 1,700+ community restaurant partners.
ChopValue is actively seeking single and multi-unit franchise development partners who want to lead the change in their community within five US states. The international expansion opportunities for its circular concept include Australia, the EU, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the SEA region.
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