Textiles are a part of almost every facet of modern life, from the clothes we wear to the fibres that make up next-generation materials. Unfortunately this ubiquity comes at an increasingly high environmental toll, with current manufacturing processes using large quantities of petrochemicals, heat energy and unsustainably sourced raw materials.
Nature offers great inspiration for new textiles possibilities, with none more impressive than the spider. Over the course of hundreds of millions of years, spiders have evolved the ability to create one of the world’s strongest and most adaptable materials – spider silk!
The spider’s spinning secret
The secret to a spider’s ability to create silk lies within their spinnerets, specialised organs that turn the liquid silk gel held in the spider’s abdomen into a solid thread. This humble creature, by combining only two compounds, water and protein, makes a solution that can be spun into high-performance textile fibres, at room temperature, without toxic chemicals and with water the only by-product.
Spintex artificially spins the highest performance silk fibres available, through this spider inspired process. The company has captured the secret of the spider’s web, to reproduce this unique fibre spinning artificially. The fibres are spun at room temperature, just by pulling from a liquid protein gel, without harsh chemicals. The process is 1000x more efficient than equivalent plastic fibres, and water is the only by-product. Uniquely produced, Spintex silk fibres are biodegradable, being made from protein, and cannot bioaccumulate.
Bioinspired spinning solutions
Founded in 2018 as a spinout from the University of Oxford, by co-founders Alex Greenhalgh, Martin Frydrych and Fritz Vollrath, Spintex has consistently been pushing the boundaries of bioinspired spinning and silk materials to provide much needed solution in sustainable and technical textiles.
These fibres are finding use in sustainable fashion textiles, but due to their high-performance will also address issues in other markets for advanced technical textiles, including lightweight composites for aerospace and automotive industries, and biocompatible medical textiles.
Sustainable Textiles: With massively reduced energy costs, green chemistry and no harmful by-products, Spintex is the only supplier of premium-quality and sustainable silk fibres.
Technical Textiles: Spintex’s high-performance, lightweight strong and tough fibres are ready for the next generation of advanced materials.
2021 Ray of Hope Prize
Recently, Spintex won The Biomimicry Institute’s 2021 Ray of Hope Prize award of US$ 100,000 in support of its groundbreaking work.
The Prize, created in honour of the late sustainable business pioneer Ray C. Anderson, is awarded each year to the world’s top nature-inspired startup after 10 finalist teams conclude a 10-week accelerator program. This year, Spintex and nine other participating companies were selected from a pool of 301 applicants from 49 countries.
Spintex is uniquely positioned as a platform technology, to replace not only silk used in fashion, but also oil-derived synthetic fibres. The company;s goal is to expand upon the textile capabilities, creating high-performance textiles with properties, such as stretch and embedded colour, all while creating biodegradable and non-bioaccumulating textiles.
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