Ecovative Are Working To Transform Entire Industries To Be More Earth-Friendly As They Acquire A New State-Of-The-Art Facility In The Netherlands
Image By Courtesy of Ecovative
Innovation is a potentially endless source of new and useful things that can help change Spaceship Earth for the better.
At Ecovative we are innovating with mycelium to move the world towards greater sustainability and circularity. But our materials first have to succeed in the world as it already is.
We work with the root structures of mushrooms to create sustainable materials and products in ways never before seen.
Mycelium is a whole new category of material that requires fewer resources, less energy, and creates a fraction of the waste of what it replaces.
But what it replaces — whether supportive foams for apparel, or plastic packaging for home delivered goods — have been around for decades, and change can be difficult. Turns out that to successfully shift away from unsustainable, polluting materials takes more than just inventing the alternative.
Ecovative, the world's leading mycelium technology company, purchased Lambert Spawn Europa B.V., a state-of-the-art mushroom spawn production facility in the Netherlands, from a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based Lambert Spawn Company.
The purchase vertically integrates a major source of mushroom substrate — mixtures of raw agricultural products inoculated with specialized mushroom strains — within the operations of the world's premier developer of mycelium materials and products.
The new line of supply will enable and support Ecovative's consistent and rapid expansion internationally and across all categories as both a producer and supplier to other mycelium companies.
AirMycelium is the basis of Ecovative's Forager™ hides, foams, and other next-generation materials and products.
Ecovative currently operates two Spawn & Substrate facilities, one in New York, and another in Venlo, Netherlands.
We approach this challenge by designing our materials to fit easily into existing markets and processes.
For example, our Forager™ Hides can be taken in by a tannery the same way they would use an animal hide. Everything leading up to that point is different, of course, because mycelium is based on biology.
Every step of the supply chain is crucial to making the final product. But mycelium is a whole new category of material, and the old, well established systems don’t always apply. That’s why we’re building our own mycelium supply chain.
Vertical integration means that a company controls each step of its own supply chain. Among its benefits are economies of scale as we grow, keeping costs low for us and our customers.
And by controlling the supply from start to finish, we have control over the quality of the final mycelium materials, with the minimum possible waste and the highest yields.
Anything we grow domestically starts at Ecovative Spawn and Substrate North America, located right next to our headquarters here in Green Island, New York.
You can spot the facility from the highway, thanks to the pair of towering silos we built to store straw, hemp hurd, wood chips, and other materials sourced from our local suppliers.
These low value inputs are the basis of our high value materials and products. We pasteurize and mix them raw materials with our mycelium, and send them to the specialized vertical farms operated for our divisions and subsidiaries, where they become foams and hides, bacon, packaging, and other goods.
The same facility can also supply our partners and licensees, ensuring that everyone using our mycelium technology gets the best products possible. But supply chains in industries like fashion, food, and packaging are international.
Now ours is, too, with a new state-of-the-art facility in the Netherlands: Ecovative Spawn and Substrate. With this facility, we can distribute top tier mycelium feedstock to our growing list of partners and customers overseas. This will be crucial as we begin to grow materials for various upcoming products made by our brand partners, such as ECCO Leather, and supply mycelium to more and more companies around the world.
By creating an integrated mycelium supply chain, Ecovative can scale up production while controlling quality and lowering costs.
We are working to transform entire industries to be more Earth-friendly. That’s only possible when we ensure the highest quality and consistency for our groundbreaking new materials. As mycelium technology takes off in each category, from food to packaging, fashion, and beyond, we have been careful and strategic about designing and building our mycelium supply chain, and how we connected them to markets with our brand partners.
Inventing something new is always just the first step. To grow it as a solution that makes a real difference in the real world is the true challenge, and it’s a challenge we embrace.
