Next-Gen Leather, S.L. is a startup company founded in 2022 by her CEO and founder, PhD Concha Garcia, that develops biotechnology processes to produce and commercialize high-performance, animal-free, and sustainable materials for the fashion, automotive, and home goods industries. The company has developed a next-generation material, BACleather, an eco-friendly material produced by microorganisms through an efficient and low-cost bio-production, based on static fermentation, and a proprietary process. The technology provides solutions to the main problems facing the leather industry: lack of sustainability, harmful for the environment and in risk to supply shortage. In contrast, our biomaterial - while having similar performances to traditional leather - is produced through a sustainable process, which is independent of animal agriculture, currently representing 14.5% of global greenhouse emissions; from tanning processes based on toxic and harmful; and from materials fossil in the case of synthetic leather. Moreover, BACleather, once its production is ready to scale-up, it will be available for any leather goods manufacturers located anywhere.
Since 2022, we are fighting for a position in a market dominated by a powerful animal leather industry, whose current dynamics must evolve once the next-gen materials enter in the market. We need therefore a strong communication and marketing strategy to increase the awareness and acceptability of our product from the customers and get a position in an oligopoly industry reluctant for a change. Only after reaching this point and de-risking the current production engineering process, we will gain credibility and attract further investment to scale-up the manufacturing process. Thus, the main goal of the Women TechEU project focuses on increasing the visibility of our company and the BACleather prototype among end-users, the public, and investors and therefore gain market acceptability.
