Nature and forests are a familiar landscape for Haimi.
"My childhood home was on the edge of the forest. I was also a scout and went berry picking with my relatives."
The spark for chemistry came from my aunt Marja-Liisa Huhtala.
“In high school, my aunt showed me her biochemistry dissertation on cancer research, and I thought I would like to do something like that one day.”
Haimi graduated in 2006 as a biochemist from the University of Tampere. In 2008, he defended his doctoral thesis on medical biomaterials.
In the early 2000s, there was no talk of bioeconomy yet.
With material against plastic waste
Haimi says Sulapac was born because she was tired of the plastic jars in her bathroom. She wanted more ecological packaging for her cosmetics.
Haimi founded the company in 2016 and was its CEO until 2024. Today, in addition to being the CEO of Ovido, he serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sulapac.
Sulapac, which focuses on materials technology, has faced major challenges in growing its business. According to Haim, these are largely due to EU legislation.
“Sulapac’s biggest barrier to market entry has been EU legislation. In particular, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation favors plastic over sustainable materials.”
According to him, the EU also has some good initiatives in the pipeline for sustainable development, such as the Ecodesign Regulation (ESPR). It obliges manufacturers to provide more detailed information about the material composition, carbon footprint and recyclability of their products.
The regulation will soon also make a digital product passport mandatory, which companies use to prove that they meet the requirements of the Ecodesign Regulation.
Using artificial intelligence to combat plastic waste
Opposition to fossil plastics will continue to be on Haim's agenda – now as CEO of Ovido Oy and one of the company's founders.
"I continue with the same mission. Sulapac focuses on materials development. Ovido solves the plastic waste problem from a data and digitalization perspective."
Founded in 2024, Ovido provides software solutions for supply chain management and data automation, especially for companies in the textile, chemical and cosmetics industries. The service helps manage and automate, among other things, certifications, reporting and supplier data collection using artificial intelligence.
"This makes it easier for small textile and bioeconomy companies that emphasize sustainability to make themselves visible to consumers," Haimi points out.
The Ecodesign Regulation is tightening regulations, but manually retrieving and sharing compliant information with customers is slow.
Ovido's cloud-based platform combines product data collection, sharing, regulatory requirements, and AI-assisted automation into a single system.
"It's a kind of AI-based Excel that automates work steps. If done manually, filling in all the product information can take up a third of a small company's working time."
Entrepreneur's tips for bioeconomy students:
1. If you are considering starting your own business, think carefully about your product idea. Where is the potential customer group whose problem you intend to solve with your product? Getting started also requires the courage to pick up the phone and make the first call to the customer.
2. Find out if your school can provide support and if there is anyone in your network who already has experience starting a business. You don't have to learn everything the hard way.
3. Be brave and trust your idea. Don't be afraid of failure, because that happens a lot in startups and it's necessary to be successful in a big way.
-2006 graduation as a biochemist
-2008 graduation as a doctor of medical biomaterials
-2016 Founding of Sulapac
-2022 Launch of Sulapac products together with Chanel and Shiseido
-2024 Establishment of Ovido
-2025 North Sails, Singtex and several Finnish brands such as Makia will start using Ovido's platform for data management and digital product passport
