CEO Talks: What’s Next for MycoWorks (2024)

Despite the rocky road for financing next-generation materials over the past year, many materials makers are ready for more. In the midst of revealing its first full-fledged factory (with 100 times the production capacity of its core Reishi product), MycoWorks’ chief executive officer Matt Scullin details the biomaterials landscape and his hope for engineering a more sustainable world.

WWD: What are your thought on the biomaterial landscape right now?

Matt Scullin: The fashion and luxury industries consistently invest in and adopt new materials. In leather, the relatively recent introduction of epi-leather — with its plant-extract tanning process — is notable because of how mainstream it quickly became. Though the materials we commonly use may appear entrenched, the fashion and luxury industries are constantly being transformed by innovation. Polyester, another example, is less than 100 years old, and yet is fashion’s most commonly used material. Now, recycled polyester comprises 15 percent of the textiles market. Another example is the ultra-high-performance fabric Dyneema, whose parent company sold for $1.5 billion last year. Or the 2021 IPO of Spinnova, a maker of wood-based and waste-based fibers.

The only way innovation moves forward in the materials sector is through brand partnerships, collaborations and joint research. It’s because of our partnerships with the high-end furniture company Ligne Roset, the renowned fashion house Hermès, and with automotive powerhouse General Motors, that MycoWorks’ Fine Mycelium technology and its hallmark material Reishi have attained the bar-setting quality standards in next-generation materials they are today.

WWD: What reassurance do you want to provide to the fashion industry and investors?

M.S.: The fashion industry is aware that alternative leather is now a term that includes a massive range of plastic- and bio-materials, and that making sense of them is challenging. It’s important to recognize that they are all different — even within a class such as “mushroom leathers” — and so the failure of one is not indicative of the quality of others.

Leather had hundreds of years to reach the product quality level it has today. Mycelium is now reaching it in mere decades. Companies that cut corners by making plastic-based materials, whether mycelium or other plant fibers, won’t finish the marathon. MycoWorks’ materials now reach quality standards that seemed unreachable even a year ago. That’s why our partners have helped us build a fully funded plant, beginning production this month, that will produce millions of square feet of Fine Mycelium. These volumes will finally enable mycelium to make it into real collections — not just capsules from pilot production volumes — with our brand partners who share the patience required to bring luxury, high-quality products to market. We continue to see strong interest from investors, who have been watching this space for years and now have a nuanced understanding of leather product quality.

WWD: Do bio-based materials face an uncertain future?

M.S.: Let’s take an analogy with something familiar, the original biomaterial: leather. Cow, calf, crocodile and other animal-based biomaterials are enormously successful; meanwhile others, such as fish leathers, seem to be perennial failures despite their abundance and repeated commercialization attempts. The reason is nuanced: some biomaterials don’t have the quality (such as hand-feel), the size or uniformity to be scalable, or the economics to truly “work.” Or, take fur — a truly ancient biomaterial — that has suddenly become so discordant with modern values that it has been virtually eliminated from the market.

Demand for new biomaterials is strong and only growing stronger, and that’s why billions of dollars of investment continue to pour into this field by major brands and financiers alike. Consumers are demanding materials that represent their modern values — such as mycelium — while brands are searching for ways to meet their aggressive climate commitments.

Furthermore, the recent growth in the luxury industry is making it increasingly difficult to find enough high-quality hides, which are primarily a coproduct of stagnant beef and dairy consumption in Europe. What will fuel continued growth in this industry, particularly from young generations who don’t want fur, crocodile or calf?

WWD: Why did companies like Bolt see unforeseen hurdles? Are you worried about the funding climate for next-gen materials?

M.S.: Next-generation materials that have stalled, made it to market initially by mixing plant and mushroom fiber ingredients with plastic. If “mushroom” and “plant-based” innovators try to cloak themselves in sustainability claims while also taking shortcuts with plastic, they will never see real adoption, which will lead to their demise.

The excitement in this space is the result of the profound demand that exists for new, high-quality biomaterials. This has spawned hundreds of start-ups, research groups and big-company projects trying to devise solutions that will see commercial adoption. While this sort of materials technology race may be relatively novel to the fashion industry, it is entirely consistent with the “hype cycle” of new technologies in virtually every other field that has seen the entry of disruptors. At one point there were several hundred solar start-ups in the San Francisco area alone; only a few percent of them succeeded, which was enough to facilitate the astronomical growth of that industry. There is no reason to believe that alternative materials for fashion and luxury will evolve any differently.

WWD: How is MycoWorks poised for scalability? What projects and new investments are in the works?

M.S.: We are excited to have recently announced the upcoming opening and start of production of the world’s first full-scale Fine Mycelium plant. Our new facility in Union, South Carolina, will deliver 100 times the capacity of our Reishi product relative to our pilot plant in California, which we’ve been operating since 2020. Our new plant is equipped with state-of-the-art automation and analytics that will allow us to deliver high volumes of material to our brand partners and enter full collections. This is enabled by our patented, tray-based Fine Mycelium technology. We’ve run over 36,000 trays to-date, optimizing and validating our manufacturing process, and the exact same trays will be running at our new plant in South Carolina at far greater volumes.

WWD: How does this equal a promising and sustainable future?

M.S.: With a carbon footprint of only 2-5 kg/m2 [per the MycoWorks lifecycle assessment], Fine Mycelium is a material that can not only meet the quality and durability standards of the luxury industry, but also provide an added level of supply chain transparency, control and sustainability to brands who use the material.

For the major luxury houses, leather is responsible for roughly half of all their greenhouse gas emissions, and addressing this opportunity is paramount to their continued resonance with consumers.