How much will lab-produced leather cost?
09/08/2013
Modern Meadow has said it believes it can also produce “cultured” leather using similar techniques. Its founder, Andras Forgacs, recently displayed some small samples of this “cultured” leather while speaking at a conference in Edinburgh.
Mr Forgacs explained at the event that he sees a number of advantages using his technique compared to the conventional methods for producing leather: there’s no hair to remove and no scars to contend with. The “cultured” leather can be layered to be transparent or opaque, and can be altered for softness, durability, breathabilty, elasticity and design as required. There is also no limit to shape: it can be directly grown in the shape of a wallet or car seat or whatever the end user wants, he said.
Cost is unlikely to be one of the advantages though. We have aked Modern Meadow how much it will cost to produce one square-foot of its material and await its answer.
What we do know, however, is that the Maastricht burger project cost $320,000. By our calculations, this means it would cost $640 million to produce the same number of burgers (2,000, at a conservative estimate) as you can make from one cow.
As for leather, if $640 million equates to one cow, it means that the cost of producing enough material to make one pair of shoes (based on a conservative calculation of 25 pairs per hide, including split) would be $25.6 million. And this doesn’t include the cost of shoe production.
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