Awareness is growing around the world on ethical and environmental issues related to intensive farming and the exploitation of animals.
An awareness that also concerns tanneries and the production of leather and leather objects: for this reason companies and retailers are looking for alternatives to the products of a highly polluting industry.
Lab-grown meat is getting more and more attention: Cellular agriculture is about to hit the market massively in the next couple of years. Now there is also space for laboratory-grown leather: and a startup says it is ready to increase its production.
From a few cells to all the cultured skin you need
Vitrolabs is developing a process capable of producing cultured skin efficiently and ecologically from just a few cells.
This process involves performing a biopsy and an initial collection of cells (which is done only once) from a live animal. These cells are then grown in a nutrient-rich environment, dividing and forming into tissue that can then be transformed into skin.
The composition of the leather grown through this process reaches the complexity of traditional leathers. And it solves one of the main obstacles to the success of alternatives to leather: too many consumers are still attracted by the luxurious quality of real leather.
Will it work?
Last autumn, the company started production with a pilot plant: the good results obtained attracted investors. The “prize” was 45 million euros in new funds obtained.
“There has been an explosion of companies developing alternative materials to leather,” he explains Ingvar Helgason, CEO of VitroLabs. “Our cultured animal leather preserves the biological characteristics that industry, artisans and consumers know and love about leather, while eliminating the most environmentally and ethically damaging aspects of the conventional leather manufacturing process associated with its supply".
Many innovators are developing alternatives to leather made using materials such as apples, hemp e mushrooms.
VitroLabs looks like it can succeed, precisely because it aims directly at the characteristics of real leather grown in the laboratory.
The paradigm? Quality and sustainability. We'll see when the first cultivated nail * comes out.
* For non-Italian readers: it is a slang term to define a leather jacket.
