Scaling up to meet luxury industry demands, biotech company MycoWorks is set to grow millions of square feet of ‘Reishi’, its leather-alternative material produced with patented technology at the world’s largest mycelium material operation in the United States.
- Reishi is a biomaterial with unparalleled hand-feel, strength and durability—on par with calfskin leather, the industry gold standard.
- Grown-to-spec, Fine Mycelium can be customised for thickness, weight and mechanical properties, allowing for an unprecedented level of control of a natural material, previously impossible via traditional agriculture.
- To date, Fine Mycelium has already been applied with great success to product categories from luxury handbags and footwear to vehicle interiors and home furnishings.
THE FACTORY: The opening of the 136,000 sq ft factory marks the world’s largest mycelium material operation, a major step for the use of mycelium – the “root structure” of mushrooms.
- Starting first with leather, MycoWorks’ Fine Mycelium proprietary technology can later be expanded into other applications.
- The plant was made possible through a $125 million Series C funding round in 2021 from Prime Movers Lab, SK Networks, Mirabaud Lifestyle Impact & Innovation Fund, DCVC Bio, Novo Holdings and several strategic customers and investors.
- With construction beginning in 2022, the project was delivered on-time and on-budget, running the same tray-based mycelium growth system successfully piloted in its California plant yet scaled to 100x the volume.
- The facility uses state-of-the-art robotics, digital analytics, and AI resources to achieve high-calibre quality and supply chain systems.
- Using automated guided robots (AGRs), the company has automated 80% of its process, enabling MycoWorks’ to reduce handling costs but maintain expert interactions where they are critical for quality assurance, achieving both high quality and low-cost production.
- For the leather industry, MycoWorks’ Union, S.C., facility is a breakthrough in supply chain management, providing full predictability, transparency, and provenance of high-quality natural materials while also reducing waste.
- For Union, South Carolina — population 30,000 — MycoWorks’ investment is reshoring production from an industry that primarily sources from Europe.
- Union has had a long history in textile manufacturing, and as the region is already home to leading automotive manufacturers, Fine Mycelium will allow other industries in the area and globally to closely collaborate on development.
WHAT THEY SAID:
As MycoWorks continues to lead in biomaterial innovation, we are thrilled to open this first-of-its-kind facility in South Carolina. This reality is thanks to our team of experienced manufacturing leaders and engineers from the consumer goods, automotive, food, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology industries who have adapted robotic equipment and systems to handle our unique tray-based biomaterials process. In turn, they have enabled the first high-quality mycelium material product at scale, a feat which has never been accomplished until now.
— Doug Hardesty
Chief Operating Officer
MycoWorks
