A Richmond-based startup that manufactures compostable, ocean-degradable consumer products has grown “exponentially” in recent years.
But Terravive founder and Chief Executive Officer Julianna Keeling believes 2021 could be its biggest year yet.
“Particularly, at this point in time, with the new administration coming in, the greater emphasis on sustainability, green jobs, social issues, people are a lot more in-tune with the types of things that Terravive talks about,” Keeling said.
Since Keeling founded the company in 2015, Terravive has made a push for U.S.-manufactured solutions that are an improvement to harmful plastics. The company uses home compostable and ocean degradable materials that are built to perform like plastic but break down like plants. Today, the startup has about 70 items in its product line, ranging from take-out containers to cups and cutlery.
Clients include government agencies, corporate headquarters and big-box retailers like Minneapolis-headquartered Target. Terravive participated in the company’s inaugural Target Incubator program in 2019.
When Covid-19 hit, Terravive sharpened its focus on marketing its sustainable single-use containers to restaurants that were experiencing a surge in demand for take-out meals. When more clients requested individually wrapped cutlery due to the pandemic, Terravive also updated its product line, said Joe Swider, the company’s vice president and chief operating officer.
Headquartered in Henrico County, Terravive has 14 manufacturing facilities across 11 states. In 2020, they opened a new warehouse in the Richmond area.
Now, it is expanding its warehousing operations nationwide. To serve the Charlotte market, they will have a primary location in Greensboro, North Carolina. Other sites will be in Dallas and Los Angeles.
“That’s purely just to handle the volume of work that’s coming through our business now,” Swider said. “We’ve had to expand even faster than originally planned.”
A couple factors are driving the increasing interest in using sustainable consumer materials, Keeling and Swider said. First, more people are concerned about their personal impact on the environment, choosing to use alternatives to plastics. In many parts of the country, communities are forcing behavior changes by introducing plastic bans.
On a global scale, China’s decision to stop importing recyclables like plastics has accelerated the market for green solutions, Keeling said. And the Terravive team is encouraged by the Biden administration’s focus on climate change and sustainability.
“Our products, and our company, as a whole, sits in a perfect nexus of what this administration has said it’s going to support,” Keeling said.
With their manufacturing and warehousing scaled up, Terravive expects more opportunities to emerge as economies begin to open. That should mean more U.S. jobs, Keeling and Swider said.
And though Covid-19 prevented Keeling from speaking at the canceled 2020 South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, it can’t keep Terravive away from The Lone Star State any longer: Its products will soon be found in restaurants throughout Austin.
