New Plastics

Since the industrial revolution, advancements in manufacturing have enabled mass consumerism to grow exponentially. However consumers are quickly becoming aware of their impact on the environment, demanding more from brands. Enter synthetic biology. Soon we will be able to produce a large share of the global economy's physical materials, without compromising on performance and sustainability. Insempra bridges the gap between synbio R&D and scalable, industrial manufacturing for brands. We believe the Insempra team can accelerate the creation of sustainable alternatives to traditional materials and we’re excited to back them on their journey.

Epoch is developing a computational approach to discover and optimise enzymes, which are natural machines that speed up chemical and biological processes. Several industrial and biomedical processes have found enzymes to be extremely valuable in speeding up reaction times, reducing energy requirements and enabling previously impossible reactions. Epoch will eventually develop and commercialise enzymes for several specific needs and use cases including accelerating plastic decomposition.

Uluu’s products act like plastic but are made from seaweed, not fossil fuels. They’re strong, lightweight and waterproof, while being truly biodegradable and biocompatible. Uluu is naturally produced via fermentation. This process uses saltwater microbes fed with farmed seaweed—a regeneratively-grown feedstock that can be scaled to entirely replace the fossil fuels used to make 400 million tonnes of plastic each year, all while sequestering carbon and bioremediating our oceans. Uluu can be directly substituted for plastic in existing manufacturing equipment, including to produce fibres that can replace polyester in textiles.

FLO Materials is commercializing a novel circular polymer platform called ECANs to enable the manufacturing and recycling of sustainable alternatives to high performance plastics, including thermosets and mixed material composites used in durable goods. The recycling can be performed at low temperature, low energy, in the absence of catalysts, and even in mixed waste streams without compromising quality and efficiency. FLO's technology unlocks the potential to create complex, multi-plastic products that can be manufactured easily and recycled into another product of equal or higher performance and value.

Modern Synthesis is a biotech company bringing life to new materials. Their patent-pending process works with bacteria to produce an entirely new class of nanocellulose-based materials which offer performance without plastics and aesthetics without animal inputs. Not only does this allow them to create lower-impact, high-value alternatives that can displace animal and plastic-based textiles, but it also enables greater aesthetic variability for their customers. They’re not just a leather replacement, they’re unlocking novel aesthetics and new performance possibilities that reimagine what natural materials are capable of.