According to techcrunch, the mission of humble bee bio is to create a biodegradable plastic substitute by synthesizing the biological characteristics of bees** Although the New Zealand based company is still in its early stages - its proof of concept is halfway through - if humble bee is successful, its bioplastics are likely to enter the sustainable textile industry.
As part of the round a financing, humble bee has just raised $3.2 million in convertible notes. It has been studying an Australian bee species, a solitary bee that does not produce honey, but will make a nest material for larvae, which has many plastic like properties.
"It's resistant to acids and bases. It's hydrophobic, it's waterproof, it's flame retardant, and it's stable below 240 degrees Celsius," Ryan graves, chief technology officer of humble bee, told techcrunch. "Our idea is, how can we recreate this?"
The team is using a synthetic biological approach that includes entering the bee's genetic code and identifying the genes and proteins responsible for nesting materials. The code has been extracted and recreated in the laboratory. Next, the company will try to synthesize plastic like materials, focusing on four different types of biomaterials, which can be transformed into finishing of fibers and fabrics.
The goal of humble bee is to prove this concept anytime from March to June 2023, when the team hopes to use industrial scale fermentation technology to expand production.
"There's still a certain degree of exploration to be done," graves said. "These processes are time-intensive and challenging. It's usually a 12-month process from code to protein, and then we need to scale up and take out hundreds of grams."
Only then will humble bee be able to consider a business strategy, but graves said many textile companies and other companies using interior decorations have contacted the company. We know that Airbus, Toyota and Ford are trying to implement the practice of circular economy, which needs to consider the whole life cycle of their products.
"At present, if you look at the interior of the car, it is largely based on petrochemical industry, so its degradation performance is very terrible," graves said
The CTO also said that fashion brands have been in contact with humble bee bio. According to a McKinsey 2019 study, environmental sustainability has become a priority for clothing companies, especially when it comes to responsible and sustainable material procurement. So far, this is most obvious in sportswear brands. For example, the north face uses brewed protein material in its moon parka, or Adidas cooperates with bolt threads to make shoes with a mushroom based material.
Graves said: "There are many different companies in this field, which is one of the reasons why we can really develop rapidly. We stand on the shoulders of giants who have done a lot of work on spider silk. Therefore, you already have companies like bolt threads and spiber, which have great market capital and are closer to the commercial terminal. They have made the proof of concept clothing, which is more than what we are trying to do here Love is much higher. "
With the recent financing of humble bee, the company's goal is to hire another senior scientist and continue to fund its outsourced R & D. Graves said that due to some "old school" genetic engineering laws, New Zealand is not the best place to manufacture biotechnology, so it has set its sights on countries such as Thailand, the United States, Mexico and Argentina, where there is existing infrastructure in the field.
"One of the benefits of bio manufacturing is that once you have the code, the actual engineering cells and basically the formula of how to ferment, it is possible to carry out distributed manufacturing mode," graves said
If the proof of concept goes well, the company has focused on the next round of financing and said it is looking for venture capital companies that focus on impact and climate and are not risk averse.