FiberFlow wins eku Zukunftspreis 2024 and €15,000 in Funding from the Saxon State Ministry

At the end of 2024, the Saxon State Ministry for Environment and Agriculture awarded FiberFlow the eku Zukunftspreis, along with €15,000 in prize money. The award recognises startups and projects working on solutions with genuine environmental relevance and it marks a significant step forward for the Leipzig-based founding team.

A Year of Progress

What makes the award particularly meaningful is the context. In 2023, Ludwig and Lena had already won the eku Preis — but with a considerably smaller sum. At that point, FiberFlow was little more than an idea developed during their studies at HTWK Leipzig.

A year later, the jury was convinced enough to award the Zukunftspreis. The idea had grown, been developed further, and was clearly being pursued with seriousness. For Ludwig and Lena, that progression is the real signal: the direction is right, and the work of the past year has shown it.

What the Funding Enables

The €15,000 will go directly into the technical work. FiberFlow is currently in the process of building its first prototypes — the goal being to prove that fiber-level separation of post-consumer textile waste can actually be made to work. Every resource at this stage goes toward answering that question faster.

The Bigger Picture

Post-consumer textile waste remains one of the harder problems in the recycling industry. Blended fabrics can't go directly into chemical or thermo-mechanical recycling processes without contaminating the output. FiberFlow's approach, separating waste textiles into clean, single-fiber fractions, addresses that gap directly. The eku Zukunftspreis is recognition that the problem is worth solving and that FiberFlow's approach to it is worth backing.