Sparxell spun out from the world-leading Bio-inspired Materials Group at the University of Cambridge (UK) in 2022 with a mission to promote a nature-inspired future by redesigning the way color is produced. Thanks to our multi-award-winning scientific foundations, Sparxell is now developing the world’s first fully plant-based, high-performance colorants to replace the harmful chemicals, metals and microplastics used by industry today.
Modern colorants (i.e. pigments and dyes) are ubiquitous, representing a multi-billion-euro industry which touches on an extraordinary variety of products, from cosmetics, textiles and food, to paints, coatings and packaging. These colorants can be entirely synthetic, metal or mineral-based, and are prized for their wide variety of vivid colors and lustrous effects. Unfortunately, these products also come with enormous environmental and social costs. Many synthetic dyes are now known to be toxic or carcinogenic, while mineral and metal-based pigments are the product of highly destructive, carbon-intensive extraction processes and, in some well-documented cases, child labor and modern slavery. These problems are not new, and there is now growing consumer and regulatory pressure to solve them. Industry, however, has found it impossible to move away from traditional colorants due to a lack of suitable replacements. While existing ‘state-of-the-art’ colorants lie at the root of the problem, emerging solutions have failed to fully address the industry’s requirements for safe, sustainable AND high-performance.
Sparxell takes inspiration from the vivid colors produced by many plants and animals. As in nature, we create photonic crystals using crystalline cellulose – a widely-available, non-toxic and renewable raw material which can be recycled from a range of potentially circular feedstocks (e.g. packaging, agricultural or textile waste). By controlling the self-assembly of this biomaterial, we can tune the color across the visible spectrum. Our innovation and early manufacturing process is patent protected, with feasibility demonstrated through the batch-scale production and evaluation of our pigments in small-scale deployments with global brands.
The goal of the BIOSPECTRA project is to overcome the remaining technical, manufacturing and product-development challenges that hold back the full commercialisation of our innovative colorant solution. This will be addressed through five objectives:
• Specify, design, and commission a pilot-scale manufacturing plant.
• Validate the product requirements and process design space for the fashion industry.
• Deliver near-to-market technical product samples for target product formats.
• Develop a complete understanding of the legal and regulatory requirements for market launch.
• Secure partnership(s) for European market introduction and complete manufacturing validation trials in preparation for launch of a full product line.
By realizing this project, we aim to become a key component of a new, circular European bioeconomy.
