Food to Fashion to Food: Bio Closed-Loop

A founder who turns textile waste into building insulation has proof that the product works, and a warehouse full of it. Buyers say it is too expensive. Mineral wool holds about 95% of the insulation market, and turning waste into usable fibre makes up 40% of the start-up's production cost. Virgin fibre from China or India would be cheaper, the founder said, but that is not why they are in the business. Moving production closer to building projects, now 1,500 kilometres away, could cut costs by more than 40%. Even then, a product 20 or 30% dearer than mineral wool will not sell.

That story sat at the centre of the Ripple on closed loops from food to fashion. Nic Gorini of Spin Ventures opened by calling it a no-brainer to take farm waste and make fibres and materials from it. Michelle de Rijk of Fair Capital Impact Fund pointed to the gap between idea and results. There are great companies using waste streams for fibres, Michelle said, but they all struggle to scale, and price is always the issue.

Parity is not enough

A founder turning crop residue into a textile fibre, between cotton and linen in performance, said the whole technology aims to be cheaper than cotton. Nic set a higher bar. A new generation of materials should beat legacy ones on price and performance and bring a measurable carbon-negative and lower-toxicity advantage too. A participant agreed. Companies switch only when a material is cheaper and better, and it falls to patient investors to fund the path there.

Feedstock is the other half of cost. The fibre founder said sourcing farm by farm brings enthusiastic farmers and first sales, but not scale. For that, a start-up must work with the farmers' customers, such as a big food brand with its own ESG targets, or regional cooperatives that buy everything their members grow. An investor in food start-ups described juice companies built on produce that retailers reject. They grew so fast that the rejects ran out, and the rescued share they claimed fell from about 80% to 60%, topped up with ordinary juice. One participant had backed a potato-starch fermentation company that solved the logistics by building next to the business that produced the waste.

The market doesn't buy processing, coating, fibre, bio-thread. The market buys t-shirts

Companies that stumbled

A third moderator, an investor in circular businesses, described Spinnova, the Finnish maker of textile fibre from wood and agricultural waste. It had proven technology, validated impact, factories, an IPO, big brands as customers and a strategic investor from the wood industry. But its offtake agreements were not binding, the volumes did not come, and it had to rework product quality and cut unit costs hard. The lesson was to integrate the value chain early and get quality and unit economics right before raising hundreds of millions. De Michelle recalled Peel Pioneers, backed in a previous role. Its unit economics worked, but investors would not fund a first-of-a-kind plant, and it went bankrupt before being acquired.

A founder in crop genetics asked the obvious question. If companies whose feedstock is almost free cannot make it, what can? De Michelle answered with a warning of a coming run on feedstock. Waste is cheap and available now but is getting scarcer, and low-value products will never hold price parity once feedstock costs rise. Companies should aim for high value.

Fish skin and potato foam

The third moderator's example was Kerecis in Iceland, which uses cod skin from the fishing industry to heal human wounds and prevent amputations. It sought US FDA approval from the start, has treated more than 20,000 patients and was acquired by Coloplast in 2023. Research and production are still in Ísafjörður, not Reykjavik. De Michelle offered PaperFoam in the Netherlands, which makes packaging from potato starch for electronics and the medical sector, buyers who will pay a bit more. It built no new technology and no big demonstration plant. It tweaked existing technology, which is also far cheaper. "We don't need that many new technologies," Michelle said, at a conference largely about technology.

Nic's answer for fashion was to combine what already exists. "The market doesn't buy processing, coating, fibre, bio-thread. The market buys t-shirts," the Spin Ventures founder said. Technologies for fibre, coating and finishing all exist, but in isolation. Put together with a certified bio-based supply chain, they could give brands a shirt that also wins on toxicity. A founder turning biopolymers into textiles said suppliers often know what a product needs better than brands do, so start-ups should work with them early and design for performance from the beginning. Partnering means a smaller slice of the pie at first, one founder said, but it is the only way to reach that kind of scale.

The insulation founder had the last hard question. Their company also makes acoustic panels, a niche where price is solved, but that is a drop in the ocean. Impact needs volume. Farmers in Denmark get heavy European support, the founder said, so why does waste get so little? Nic said Europe now puts bio-circular models at the top of its priorities, for sovereignty and competitiveness as much as for the environment. The support goes to products with a tangible, measurable advantage in cost and performance, Nic added. That is the test the insulation in the warehouse still has to pass.

This Ripple was hosted by Nic Gorini (Spin Ventures) and Michelle de Rijk (Fair Capital Impact Fund) at The Drop 2026 on 16 September.