Tanning group to launch non-leather division
Leather manufacturing group ISA TanTec has announced that it is setting up a new division to develop “additional sustainable products” that it will manufacture alongside leather. It will call this new part of the business Creation of Sustainable Materials (COSM).
It has two types of material in development already under the COSM umbrella. The first of these, HyphaLite, will be available to brands and finished product manufacturers in the first quarter of 2021. The second, VeraLite, will come onto the market during the second quarter of next year.
HyphaLite and VeraLite are made from mushroom, mycelium and other plant-based materials that are biodegradable. Its suppliers will use mushrooms unsuitable for human consumption in the production of the raw material. ISA TanTec said on announcing the development that it was following circular economy principles in developing these materials: waste, including cutting waste, will be integrated back into the process.
The group’s founder and executive chairman, Tom Schneider, said COSM was the result of two years’ investigation and research with the science community into how to build “these new sustainable materials along with our leathers”.
COSM products will be developed using the same LITE (low impact on the environment) manufacturing processes that ISA TanTec developed 16 years ago and employs in the production of all its leather collections. Central to LITE is minimising carbon footprint and chemical and water consumption.
Chief executive, Uwe Hutzler, said that these are “unprecedented times” and that ISA TanTec wanted pay more attention and dedicate additional resources to innovation. Specific to the two mushroom-based materials that will be the first fruits of COSM, the group’s vice-president for additional materials, Dr Reiner Hengstmann, said: “Mushrooms are an amazing, fast renewable natural organism. Due to their rapid growth, the feedstock availability is almost unlimited.”
