A Danish biotechnology startup making sustainable dyes for the fashion industry just raised 4.3 million euros ($4.6 million).
Octarine Bio, founded in 2018 in Copenhagen, creates bio-based dyes using fermented yeast. Its technology platform can enhance and optimize the ingredient’s properties depending on what the customer wants, for example how easily it dissolves in water or breaks down in UV.
There are two other ingredients in its dye, which the company is not disclosing.
Octarine Bio started out focusing on cannabinoid and psilocybin-derived therapeutics but has since pivoted to natural dyes. It used the same biotech process to develop and tweak enzymes.
The round was led by Nordic and European fund Unconventional Ventures, which backs diverse founding teams. Deeptech investor Óskare Capital, The Footprint Firm, and bioscience fund Dsm-firmenich Venturing also participated.
“I had no idea what conventional dyeing looked like and actually how polluting it is to start with, the more we investigated the more shocking it became,” cofounder and CEO Nethaji Gallage told Insider.
Today, many textile dyes are synthetic, rely on petroleum and chemicals, and require extreme temperatures to take to fabrics, Gallage said.
A typical coloring process involves bleaching fabric, applying dye, treating it, and then washing it multiple times. The fashion industry accounts for an estimated 10% of global emissions while dyeing and finishing products is responsible for 20% of clean water pollution.
Octarine Bio’s dyes can be applied directly onto fabric in ambient conditions without the use of additional chemicals, and take up to 10 minutes to fix to fabric, Gallage said.
There are natural alternatives out there already, the cofounder added, but pigments are often extracted from plants and restricted to pastel colors. This adds scalability issues, she said. On top of that, natural dyes don’t always work well with synthetic fabrics such as polyester and nylon.
“This is a huge value inflection point” as Octarine Bio’s colors are scalable thanks to fermentation and work well on synthetic fabrics, Gallage said.
The startup can produce a range of “vibrant” colors but is honing in on purple as its flagship product.
It brings the company’s total raised to 12 million euros.
The fresh cash will be used to scale up out of the lab; it will work with fermentation contractors as it pilots the product, producing colored fabric for potential partners and supplying them with liquid and powder dye. Octarine Bio will keep its team lean with a current headcount of 12.
Check out the 11-slide pitch deck below.
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