Vegea is an innovative start-up based in Northern Italy which is proposing a breakthrough innovation that will address and solve a series of industrial and environmental issues. Vegea already set-up and demonstrated at laboratory scale a novel and green process to transform wine industry waste, the grape marc, into a low-impact, cruelty-free leather for fashion, furniture, automotive and packaging applications.
Fashion industry (including leather industry) is one of the most polluting industries in the entire world today in terms of overexploitation of natural resources, use of toxic substances, hazardous waste production, carbon emissions and work-related diseases. VegeaTextile is addressing two main issues, working at both sides of its value chain. The first is the proposition of a new bio-based and low- environmental impact material as a green and cruelty free alternative to animal and synthetic leather. The second issue addressed, is to create a value chain for the grape marc, which is currently considered as a waste, with growing problems for its disposal: indeed grape marc is currently burnt, with the production of greenhouse gases. Considering the increasing wine production worldwide, the disposal of grape marc, which is currently produced at about 7 million tons per year worldwide, is a major environmental concern.
VegeaTextile transforms a waste, the grape marc, into a bio-based textile, which has physical, mechanical and aesthetic characteristics equivalent to both animal and synthetic leather. With our solution we want to address the issue of the increasing demand of the textile industry from its stakeholders, not only in the fashion sector but also in the automotive and furniture, for new technical solutions with a dedicated focus on increasing the sustainability. Vegea’s strategy is, first of all, to use as a feedstock a raw material which is considered a waste and doesn’t have a proper value chain, following the concept of circular economy. The overall increase in sustainability in respect to conventional leather production processes is substantial, thanks both to the renewable nature of the feedstock, which is a vegetable then it consumes CO2 for growing, and to the production process, which is considerably less polluting than the conventional ones.
The first objective of the VegeaTextile project is to industrialize the leather production on a commercial scale, by confirming all the assumptions of increased sustainability that were made on laboratory scale. At the same time, project activities will need to ensure that VegeaTextile will be competitive against animal and synthetic leather, both in terms of technical features and production cost.
The second main objective of this project is to support Vegea in creating a market for VegeaTextile, by carrying out dissemination, communication and exploitation activities that may lead to the development of a competitive and effective business.
