Biofore Magazine 2020

By Lara McCoy Photography Joonas Linkola

FEATURE

41

A newmaterial Because the material is so new, however, getting the new Mysoda appliance into production took a little more work than using traditional fossil-basedmaterials. Mysoda works with a manufacturing partner in China to produce its appli- ances, and this subcontractor had never worked with a biocomposite before. “It was a challenge to convince the Chinese subcontractor that this was the right way to go, to convince them to take a chance on a material they didn’t know,” says Solomon. “But we were already so ex- cited about this material that we made it clear that if they wanted to work with us, they needed tomake this happen.” The UPM team in China was key to keeping the processmoving forward, espe- cially since no one from Mysoda or UPM in Finland was able to go to China due to coronavirus-related travel restrictions. “Always with a new material, it takes time to get familiar with it and learn how to work with it,” says Dayong Han , an in- ternational product manager with UPM based in Shanghai. “Our material can run smoothly within the industrial moulding process, we just had to help them find the right settings to use.” Han and his colleagues in China spent a lot of time on calls with Finland discuss- ing how to manage the trial runs of the material, the overall production and qual- ity control. They also had to send physical samples back and forth, all under the pres- sure of very tight deadlines.