Mushroom-based textile among new products for ISA TanTec
It will call this new part of the business Creation of Sustainable Materials (COSM).
It has two types of material in development 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 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.
Specific to the two mushroom-based materials, 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.”
ISA TanTec founder Tom Schneider has said the group’s move into alternative materials will not detract in any way from its commitment to making leather.
Speaking to sister publication World Leather, Mr Schneider said this new business division had already developed two mushroom-based products that are 100% natural and commercially usable.
“We are not saying that this is an alternative to leather,” he said. “No. Absolutely not. I don’t want to have an alternative to leather. I want to have an alternative to the vegan materials, to the polyurethane stuff.”
He explained that the new materials ISA TanTec has developed are already being tested by a big-name brand who may, he suggested, order several million square-feet of the new materials next year, but that this will be to replace plastic materials that it is using at the moment.
Mr Schneider said ISA TanTec’s aim is not to “cannibalise” its main product, leather, but to offer customers additional products, ones that have a good story behind them and are available from a supplier that brands have worked with for 20 years already.
