UPSCALE OF AN INNOVATIVE, PIONEER AND SUSTAINABLE BIOMATERIAL (BacLEATHER) FOR THE FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY

ended

The global leather business is still mainly dependent on raising and slaughtering of billions of animals. This, in the XXI century is not only an inefficient and cruel process but also, it creates a huge environmental impact, which could be avoidable. Unfortunately, brands and shoes manufacturers have no ecological alternative to natural leather that can reproduce successfully its key characteristics from the consumer point of view. Existing alternatives in the market, mainly PVC bases synthetic leather, do not only show poorer performance from client perspective but also they still create a huge environment impact. Potential clients across the world (Inditex and Louis Vuitton in Europe; Puma, Adidas and Nike in USA) do confirm there is a clear trend towards the development of safer, toxic-free, sustainable, environmental-friendly and more ethical footwear and leather goods. Furthermore they confirm the need of new materials to increase their productivity and profitability while reducing the use of hazardous chemicals in tanning practices. Considering the size of the leather market (estimated around 100bn$ by 2019, CAGR 3,4%) and these comments from clients, we see very high potential in upscaling to industrial level the results we obtained so far with BacLEATHER, a leather-like biomaterial. This material is produced by bacterial fermentation through a proprietary technology and mimics leather characteristics. Patent Shoes, S.L. has already been able to produce the material in short series and we have already established a collaboration with TEMPE, from GRUPO INDITEX (one of the most important brand footwear companies, owner of ZARA brand, among others) in order to prepare the material for its market-fit within the footwear vertical. We see in the BacLEATHER project a clear investment opportunity, in which we seek entering the fast growing leather-like market and achieve a five-year cumulative cash flow of €16,75 M€, meaning a 5-years ROI of 610%.