Micovation

The climate crisis and the need for sustainable solutions to plastic pollution and the meat industry have led to a growing demand for alternative materials and products. The leather industry, valued at USD 394 billion, is facing challenges due to the unsustainable nature of traditional animal leather production where heavy chemicals are released during the tanning process. The only established alternative today is made out of plastics, which is petroleum-based and leads to plastic pollution.

But there is a huge change happening in the market today. Companies like IKEA, VOLVO, and NIKE have all promised to only use sustainably sourced materials by 2030. This is opening up a huge market that is estimated to go from 97 million € 2021 to 1,9 billion € 2026. There have been a few new next-generation materials that try to go to the market but they lack scalability, cost too much and do not work within the machinery that produces leather goods today.

Additionally, the beer industry is also facing challenges as the growth of micro-breweries results in an increase in brewery waste streams. Traditional methods for the disposal and treatment of this waste are energy-intensive and costly for beer companies.

Our aim is to revolutionize the next generation of leather by utilizing new biotechnology that harnesses the amazing power of mycelium, a root-like structure from fungi that can treat run-off waste from breweries and convert it to biomass, which can be used to create mycelium-based leather. We combine new technologies that have been proven in science and show great promise for the market as it is highly scalable and, thanks to the collaboration with breweries, have a low environmental impact. We plan to co-create with our customers to meet their specific needs for leather and create long-term relationships.

Our mycelium leather offers a circular, customizable, vegan, non-plastic alternative to animal and petroleum-based leather and aligns with EU and UN sustainability goals. The customizability of the leather gives us the opportunity to develop it from the beginning to fit the machinery of the industry and very early estimates have shown that we may be able to have a 90% lower production cost compared to the market price for other premium next-generation leather.

We stay competitive through close co-creation with local companies, high-value customer service, branding and our low environmental impact. We also have many opportunities for patenting within the production and of the final product.