Lab-Grown Leather: Faircraft Snaps Up VitroLabs to Scale Up Future Material

French startup Faircraft has acquired the assets of fellow lab-grown leather maker VitroLabs in a bid to reach industrial-scale production of the alternative material.

In a major consolidatory move in the nascent lab-grown leather category, Faircraft has bought the strategic assets of San Francisco startup VitroLabs for an undisclosed sum.

The deal does not include VitroLabs’s staff, though it does give Faircraft access to a technical portfolio of 30 patents to boost its efforts to industrialise the production of cell-based leather for the luxury fashion space.

“We performed the acquisition because they did a great job of developing and protecting some key technologies for lab-grown leather manufacturing,” Faircraft CEO and co-founder Haïkel Balti told Green Queen.

“This helps us consolidate our position as leaders in the lab-grown leather segment… [and] accelerate our industrialisation process to bring these great materials to the market.”

How Faircraft makes its lab-grown leather

VitroLabs was the first company to showcase the feasibility of creating high-end leather grown from animal cells, attracting $46M in a Series A funding round that involved Parisian luxury goods giant Kering and Hollywood actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio.

The firm’s research focuses primarily on tissue engineering, which has helped it develop patented solutions in cultivating multilayered skin structures, the use of synthetic or natural biological supports for cell cultivation, and the development and use of cells suitable for large-scale cell-cultivation.

Faircraft, meanwhile, was founded in 2021 by Balti and César Valencia Gallardo. It uses cellular biology to develop low-carbon materials for a broad range of applications, and its cultivated leather is derived from animal skin cells, which are made to replicate the structure and composition of conventional leather via cellular agriculture.

“We first take a harmless skin biopsy, then extract relevant cells from this biopsy,” explained Balti. “We then demultiply these cells using bioreactors. Once we get enough cells, we then seed them onto a scaffold that helps them organise in 3D, placing cells at the right distance from each other.

“We then feed these cells with nutrients made of water, minerals, vitamins, amino acids. Cells then begin to produce collagen and elastin in large quantities. After four weeks, we get a lab-grown skin, ready to be tanned using traditional tanning methods, [but] made much cleaner.”

The process uses a much lower amount of chemicals and water, and leads to much less waste than conventional leather production, which is an energy– and water-intensive process linked to deforestation and biodiversity loss.

Faircraft looks to set up a pilot facility in two years

Faircraft says the takeover of VitroLabs and its decade of R&D work complements its scientific base and will help it get to market faster. “This acquisition is a great opportunity to accelerate our industrialisation process and the use of our great materials within our first market – luxury fashion and leather goods,” Balti said.

It has already partnered with several leading players in this space. While Balti is bound by non-disclosure agreements, he stressed that these are “top fashion houses we all know about”.

The firm is producing a few square metres of its lab-grown leather per month at its Paris facility, which has been enough to advance these collaborations. “We are looking to expand our manufacturing capability at our current facility, but the big jump will be made in two years with our first pilot manufacturing facility,” he said.

To aid this effort, Faircraft closed a $15.8M funding round in November, which was earmarked to expand its team and develop machinery for commercial production. It simultaneously released a handbag tanned using traditional methods and made by Parisian leather artisans.

Conventional leather production has a much higher carbon footprint, at 110kg of CO2e per square metre, compared to synthetic and plant-based alternatives. On the other hand, synthetic leather mainly uses petroleum-derived plastic and can take up to 500 years to break down, while also shedding microplastics that can destroy marine life, the waterways, and our health.

Animal-derived leather additionally releases lots of health-harming chemicals during tanning. Faircraft’s cell-based version relies on master tanners who specialise in luxury leather to perfect the finish of its material, safeguarding the interests of those who make their livelihoods from the industry. And the material generates 90% fewer CO2 emissions and 95% less waste, and requires 80% less water to produce.

It is one of several startups innovating with lab-grown leather, including US-based Modern Meadow, UK startups Lab-Grown Leather Ltd and 3D Bio-Tissues, and Dutch players Qorium and Pelagen.