Employing microbes to grow customisable and fully circular precision biomaterials for the fashion industry using local agricultural waste feedstocks.
Long description
We’re a London based biomaterial start-up evolving the way we make fashion materials, with biology.
We employ microbes to grow a new type of composite material made of cellulose, the natural building block of materials like cotton and wood, through a patent-pending process we call microbial weaving.
This is a biofabrication process, which means the material structure is grown-in without the need for heavy chemical processing or harmful binders. We create a yarn scaffold using automated fibre placement which we then grow bacteria in and around to create a strong, lightweight material with boundless opportunity for design and performance customization. Our aim is to make the process completely circular using only natural and waste feedstocks, with the end material being 100% biodegradable or closed-loop recyclable.
Recently building out our lab space, we are focused now on improving our process and partnering with brands to develop custom materials with them and deploy these in new products. Whilst we have received huge interest from designers to work with our bio-fabricated materials, we have limited lab sampling capacity. To scale and make designing with the material more accessible, we are developing two key areas:
(1)Build out a local feedstock supply chain using agricultural waste from UK apple farms
(2)Improve digital tools for designing and prototyping with our bio-fabricated materials to make our processes more accessible to a wider group of creatives while we grow our physical capacities.
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