An EU-backed consortium is trying to solve the hard part of leather alternatives: scaling a bio-based material that is both durable and genuinely recyclable.
A new EU-funded project, Fabulose, coordinated by Germany’s DITF, is targeting a familiar contradiction: most “vegan leather” is either plastic-based (and hard to recycle) or partly bio-based but difficult to scale into consistent, high-performance materials. Fabulose’s answer is to industrialise a fermentation-first route, then design for circularity from day one.
The consortium aims to produce bacterial cellulose, cyanophycin and bacterial pigments using advanced fermentation—fed by waste streams and even industrial CO₂ off-gas—and then combine them into a coating-and-backing system that matches leather’s durability and aesthetics. DITF’s HighPerCell® technology is positioned as the bridge from lab novelty to manufacturable textile: re-spinning bacterial cellulose into filaments for recyclable, consistent fabric backings, and shifting from batch handling to roll-to-roll processing for scale.
If it works, Fabulose would move the category from “clever biomaterial” to platform material—a specification-ready substitute for automotive, fashion and upholstery suppliers that increasingly need proof of non-toxicity, traceability and end-of-life pathways. The project also bakes in eco-design and safe-by-design screening to avoid the regulatory traps that have caught earlier alternatives.
The decisive test will be economics and repeatability at industrial speed. Fabulose plans to use AI-driven optimisation and a digital twin to lock down key process parameters—because for leather substitutes, performance consistency is the real scaling bottleneck.
