EXCLUSIVE: Bucha Bio Ramps Up Development With Move to Houston Innovation Hub

Sustainable materials-maker Bucha Bio has set it sights on the Lone Star State. The eco-friendly fiber company has relocated its headquarters from New York City to Houston’s start-up innovation and manufacturing hub East End Maker Labs, it was announced Friday. They will also join climate-tech incubator Greentown Labs as a member.

The move comes after completing a $550,000 round of funding led by New Climate Ventures, on top of $250,000 seed funding from SOSV’s planetary health-focused fund IndieBio when it launched in 2019.

The more cost-effective location and latest cash infusion has allowed the company to bring on key scientific hires to bolster research and development.

“The fact that we can build a larger team really sets us up for the right kind of growth, and the hub is dedicated to high-tech manufacturing and biotech start-ups,” chief executive officer Zimri T. Hinshaw told WWD. The space will enable a custom lab and materials library.

“This facility will really allow us to focus on our core, which is creating these different technologies for brands — not just for show — but for products that they’re interested in.”

Bucha Bio is behind Shorai, a plant-based, completely biodegradable substitute for leather or vinyl originally developed from scoby, the sticky bacteria and yeast byproduct of kombucha, and now with other bio-based nanocellulose composite materials.

The company is working closely with several luxury labels to prototype watchbands, handbags and footwear, as well as a line of trucker hats in collaboration with an upscale streetwear brand that is slated to drop in the fourth quarter.

“We are now hitting that stage where we have the visibility and brands are approaching us,” Hinshaw said.

While tight-lipped about “at least a dozen” names while still in the development phase, Hinshaw said the company has gone the partnership route to create products to meet the specific needs of the luxury brands. “What the brand is historically known for and what their aesthetic has been will determine what kind of material they are looking for. With these core development contracts it is very, very custom. It makes sense for us to develop it together as opposed to us developing a generic product” that would need to be altered later, he said.

Creating the composites to spec also lessens the environmental impact since the material can be manufactured in various colors, textures and finishes using plant-based bio polymers and thus bypass the traditional chemical dyeing and tanning process still used by other leather alternatives. Naturally strong, it also doesn’t require a thin polyurethane coating to reinforce durability.

The material is not limited to accessories; they’re also working with car manufacturers to create automotive upholstery.

While there is a lot of attention around mycelium leather alternatives, making mushroom-based products requires building expensive specialized factories, Hinshaw said. One of the driving reasons behind Bucha Bio’s move to Houston was to take advantage of the existing infrastructure already set up for plastics manufacturing in the oil capital of the country.

“The question for us was, how do we get to market at a similar timeline as [mycelium] and not do all that? And the answer was use a composite material and slot it into an existing industrial network of machines. Once we do that, we can do this anywhere in the world at an industrial scale,” Hinshaw said. “All we have to do is create a kick-ass material.”