LONDON — Sparxell, a Cambridge-based plant-based colorant start-up, has secured 1.9 million euros in funding from the European Innovation Council.

Benjamin Droguet, founder and chief executive officer of Sparxell, said funding from the European Innovation Council will allow the company, which claims to use biodegradable pigments such as wood pulp and agricultural waste to deliver colorant results that outperform synthetic alternatives, to accelerate its manufacturing scale-up and overcome key technical challenges.

“With our plant-based technology, we’re offering industries a fundamentally different approach to color that works with nature rather than against it while meeting the highest performance standards,” he said.

A member of LVMH’s La Maison des Startups accelerator program, Sparxell said it is reaching its first million in sales since spinning out of the University of Cambridge in 2023.

In April 2024, the plant-based pigment-maker locked up $3.2 million in a combination of seed funding, direct investments and grants from backers, including beauty giant L’Oréal Group as an anchor investor, along with Materra and Evrnu investor PDS Ventures, venture firm Future Communities Capital, impact investment fund Katapult, as well as Joyance Partners and Snøcap VC.

Since then, it has expanded its Cambridge headquarters capacity to enable kilogram-scale production. Sparxell said it plans to further expand its facilities this year, to double production capacity and establish production laboratories.

The company believes its technology can significantly reduce energy and water consumption, and eliminate toxicity in human-contact applications such as cosmetics and food applications.