ONES TO WATCH
Neat Nanofibers
As COVID Shut Down the World, Invenio Founders Used the Circumstances to Create a Compostable Surgical Mask from Cotton By Caryn Smith, IFN Chief Content Officer
S
imona Pellegri, CEO & Founder of Invenio, spent the year of the global pandemic researching and testing the idea to make air filtration media sustainable. Her background in agricultural sciences, and research in sustainable yarns, fed her desire to find innovative solutions to increasingly ambitious projects. Co-founder Annalisa Gaimarri has a medical biotechnology degree, and is a PhD in Pharmacology, Chemotherapy and Medical Toxicology. Between the two, their skillset was the perfect combination to tackle the vision for their innovation – a fully compostable face mask. Their mission now is to take the concept of compostability and sustainability to industrial filtration media. Based near Milan, Italy, the founders of Invenio – with corporate tagline of New Innovation Dreams – are busy building the infrastructure to support companies on their path to environmentally sustainable growth, considering three parallel guidelines, all equally important: high material performance, environmental protection and process improvement. We interviewed Simona Pellegri to find out how this innovation came about, and where it is headed. International Filtration News: Give us some background information on the company, and how your invention came about? Simona Pellegri: In 2017, I had the dream, if you want to call it that, of a compostable surgical mask when I was still studying at the university. Because of the 2020 pandemic and time on my hands,
14 IFN ISSUE 1 2024
Q+A IN THIS ISSUE:
SIMONA PELLEGRI
CEO & Founder of Invenio (at right) With
ANNALISA GAIMARRI Co-Founder of Invenio
cally the filtration in masks to try to mitigate the spreading of the disease. That’s how it started. It was a very unhappy time, but it gave us this spark to do something about it. We combined our two different fields of expertise – my knowledge of agrotechnology, and my partner’s research in medical biotechnology. I’ve always been very keen on the environmental side of things, having worked with agricultural products, as well as legal sciences. Having the knowledge of the current legislation has enabled me to fully understand what the requirements are for any sort of medical filtration product. Also, my colleague’s extensive research capability compelled us forward and after two years of research, we came up with our Neatess® filtering membrane. IFN: What is Neatess® and what is its function?
I decided it was the right time to pursue the idea. I began to aggressively research this idea. I felt I had to do something positive to come out of this pandemic storm. I consulted with my friend, Annalisa Gaimarri, who is now the co-founder and Invenio chief R&D manager, and we developed the idea of how to improve basi-
Pellegri: The interesting thing is that it starts from simple cotton. We modified it through a special process and came up with this filtering membrane. It is currently only for face mask use, but we do see extended uses for the product in the future. Neatess® is created through a special production process with a low environmental impact. Starting from nature, we can develop a new extremely highperforming, sustainable technical textile, thanks to their combination with nanofibers. Neatess® is a cotton-based filter membrane that combines the natural characteristics of cotton with excellent filtering efficiency and high breathability.
