Pakistani startup joins fight against climate change

Seeking inspiration in the atmosphere, a Pakistani startup, Suftech Innovations, has joined the fight against climate change by reutiliseing resources, reducing marine and soil pollution, and significantly bringing curtailing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Suftech Innovations is a climate tech startup with state-of-the-art patent-pending technology that aims to lead the transition from a linear plastics economy to a truly circular and sustainable plastics economy.

The startup boasts the ability to create pristine polymer from plastic waste, producing a product of such a premium quality that it can be used as a replacement for virgin polymer.

This directly takes the firm a step closer to the Net-Zero emissions goal, promotes circularity and sustainability and helps commercial organisations fulfil their commitments related to recycling and reusing plastics responsibly.

It should be noted that the technology is replicable, and scalable and can be relocated to any global destination.

“The reason for doing something related to climate change was very simple, it was something that is very close to our heart,” Ahsan Ejaz, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Suftech Innovations Private Limited, told Geo.tv.

With the focus on being able to help solve global environment-related issues, the founders of Suftech believe “the Earth is our only home and if actions weren’t taken now, this home will not be liable for our future generations”.

With no investors on board, the founders of the startup kick-started their operations after they were awarded the Green Challenge Fund by Karandaaz Pakistan, the implementation partner of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) in 2021.

The funding helped them set up their commercial scale plant and they now aim to make Suftech Innovations as a regional company in the next five years with at least two manufacturing facilities located in the MENA region.

Ejaz claims that Suftech has already brought a revolution within Pakistan and they aim to expand to the US and the UK markets in the next ten years.

He elaborated that within a few months, the firm has prevented 30,000+ kilograms of plastic waste from entering the environment and causing soil/marine pollution. “The technology helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 450,000kg and helped save $60,000 of precious foreign exchange by replacing virgin polymer with our product,” he added.

While most of the startups are struggling to continue operations, Suftech hasn’t been affected by the economic crunch that others are facing.

Ejaz believes every crisis is also an opportunity. “Due to the unfortunate economic scenario in Pakistan that has put restrictions on import and made everything imported extremely expensive it has at the same time created opportunities for businesses that rely on local materials,” he said.

“At Suftech we create virgin-like polymer from plastic waste which is readily available in Pakistan therefore we were not impacted by the shortage of raw materials ensuring the availability of our product and cementing our position as a reliable supplier for our customers,” he added.

The co-founder, however, added that the very high cost of electricity and the taxation system in Pakistan for startups needed to be simplified.

“This would allow startups like ours to reach our potential much more quickly and efficiently,” he maintained.