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Sourcing Journal

Modern Meadow Goes All In on Biomaterials

Alexandra Harrell
2 min read
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Modern Meadow isn’t hedging its bets.

The biofabrication company has sold off its beauty and biomedical divisions to focus entirely on its biomaterials business. French biotech company HTL Biotechnology acquired these divisions, including Modern Meadow’s platform of recombinant proteins, for an undisclosed amount. That funding will be used to scale up its biomaterial offerings.

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With that in mind, the New Jersey firm named David Williamson as president and chief operating officer, where he will lead the company’s efforts to prioritize and accelerate the growth of its biomaterials business. Williamson previously spent over a decade at DuPont, building and leading various key technical and operations initiatives.

“The collaboration between design, biology and material science will lead to real-world solutions that make a meaningful difference for people and the planet,” Williamson said. “Our decision to focus on our bio-materials business will focus both our research and commercial efforts in this sector and bring next-gen products to industries such as apparel, footwear, outdoor and automotive.”

What drove Modern Meadow to put all its eggs in one basket, focusing exclusively on biomaterials? The answer is simple. Bio-Vera.

Crafted from upcycled materials and the company’s Bio-Alloy technology—a flexible mix of proteins and polymers—the new non-woven scaffold is stronger and lighter than leather with more than 90 percent sustainable content. The engineered material uses renewable, traceable inputs and requires no special preservation or storage conditions, readily available at scale with reduced manufacturing complexity and costs.

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The material goes through extensive testing—checking things like its durability, colorfastness, haptics, among other more esoteric analyses as well. The non-woven is then dipped into a proprietary solution and processed on (relatively small) machinery before becoming Bio-Vera. It’s a seemingly simple and scalable process, but one that took quite some time to master.

“The art in this, the brilliance in this, is understanding the fundamental science of the Bio-Alloy,” Williamson explained. “This is why it took so long to develop, right? Because we wanted to make sure that we perform. We wanted a material that would be sustainable, but we wanted a material that is scalable; we can’t have an impact on the world if no one can afford it. The devil is in the details.”

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