Lab-grown leather is an animal-free material engineered to replicate the look, feel, and durability of animal leather without traditional livestock farming. Unlike synthetic “vegan leather” (usually plastic-based, like PU or PVC), lab-grown leather uses biological processes—cells, microbes, or plant-based mycelium—to create a natural material. LGL is a biotech company specialising in producing real leather via tissue engineering rather than from slaughtered animals. Their mission: provide sustainable, cruelty-free, traceable leather alternatives that match the structure, feel, look, strength of traditional leather.
They use an Advanced Tissue Engineering Platform (ATEP™) to grow leather, starting from skin (dermal) cells. The cells produce collagen etc.
A key feature: their leather is scaffold-free. That is, they avoid using external scaffolds or synthetic frameworks that some other bioleathers use to hold structure. The idea is that cells self‐organise into natural tissue structure.
They grow only the dermis layer (skin structure), removing/omitting the parts like fat, epidermis, hair etc, so that what remains is more directly usable for tanning into leather.
They use an Advanced Tissue Engineering Platform (ATEP™) to grow leather, starting from skin (dermal) cells. The cells produce collagen etc.
A key feature: their leather is scaffold-free. That is, they avoid using external scaffolds or synthetic frameworks that some other bioleathers use to hold structure. The idea is that cells self‐organise into natural tissue structure.
They grow only the dermis layer (skin structure), removing/omitting the parts like fat, epidermis, hair etc, so that what remains is more directly usable for tanning into leather.
Advantages & Strategic Position
Ethically better: avoids animal slaughter; cruelty-free. Environmentally better in many respects: less land, water use; reduced deforestation; lower emissions vs conventional leather when considering livestock raising, tanning etc. Also removing synthetic scaffolds and plastics reduces plastic pollution. Traceability: Because it’s lab grown, production can (in principle) be more tightly controlled/monitored. Potential to scale into markets beyond fashion: automotive interiors, luxury accessories, aerospace, etc.
LGL is positioning itself as a partner to luxury brands who want sustainable, premium materials. They also seem focused on white-label / B2B: supplying material to brands, not (primarily) direct to consumer. Sample shipments to brands are underway. Innovation seems important: patented platform; product differentiation (thickness, strength, novel aesthetics etc) is their competitive lever.
About Lab-Grown Leather
Lab-grown Leather Ltd is a new business, based in Newcastle Upon Tyne UK, being developed by BSF Enterprise Plc to scale up the technical development and operational sales of animal skin products. BSF Enterprise Plc, founded in 2018 and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2019, is focused on developing sustainable biotechnological solutions through industrial tissue engineering.
Lab-grown Leather Ltd focuses on producing a cultivated dermal skin, that replicates natural skin and once tanned has an identical composition to traditional leather, guaranteeing the same performance. its lead product is called “Elemental LeatherTM“
Lab-grown Leather Ltd utilizes a unique “scaffold-free” tissue engineering technology. This means that unlike some other lab-grown leather approaches and many plant-based alternatives, Elemental LeatherTM is made without additives or scaffolding, allowing the cells (including engineered cells) to create their own natural structure. This is considered a significant advantage, leading to a more authentic and durable end product that is more compatible with traditional leather processing techniques, including tanning. While other bio-based alternatives exist, such as plant-based fungi-based and inorganic glass fibre-based leathers, Elemental LeatherTM is claimed to be “true leather” as it is made entirely from animal cells and the proteins they produce creating the same structure as traditional leather. This results in a material that is structurally and genetically identical to traditional leather, offering the same durability, feel, and versatility.
The project’s developers say the lab-grown material will be fully biodegradable and structurally identical to traditional leather. It will also be “innovative and ethically sound,” Che Connon, professor of tissue engineering at Newcastle University, said in a statement.
Connon also works for biotechnology company Lab-Grown Leather, which is developing the project with Dutch creative agency VML and genomic engineering firm The Organoid Company.
“We’re unlocking the potential to engineer leather from prehistoric species, starting with the formidable T-Rex,” added Connon, who is one of the project’s leaders.
Connon and his colleagues may be eyeing the fashion industry — market data provider Fortune Business Insights says the global $500 billion leather goods market will be worth $855 billion by 2032 — and sectors beyond, such as the automotive industry.
But Connon rebuked the notion that it’s not possible, telling The Post that “some people have got the wrong end of the stick saying, well, you can’t do it. That’s not true.” “Some of that seems to be around, there is no T-Rex skin, but leather isn’t skin. It’s a component of skin,” he explained. “So that’s a bit of confusion there. The technologies there are incredible, but they are very much there. And I think the challenge is, there’s a lot to bring people up to speed with.” As he explained, the collagen fragments extracted are available from blood vessels or micro-vessels in bone, and the blood vessels have the same biological makeup as skin. “It’s the structural part of the skin, which forms leather.” “People aren’t aware of all the different technologies or aware that they exist, so putting them together is quite a bit of a mental leap for people,” Connon said. “But rest assured, these are all things that have been proven.”
UK tissue engineering company that successfully produced lab-grown leather earlier this year has produced an increased size of cultivated skin tissue at its laboratory in Newcastle.
Lab-Grown Leather (LGL, formerly 3D Bio-Tissues), a UK-based biotech start-up company owned by BSF Enterprise, has produced lab-grown leather grown solely from cells from an animal to produce skin to be tanned into leather for use in the luxury goods market. The team produced an animal skin tissue measuring up to 10x10cm in size and over 2mm (2.8mm before tanning) in thickness, building on the 0.5mm thickness of tissue that was displayed at the Future Fabrics Expo leather show, back in June.
Dr Che Connon, managing director of BSF Enterprise, said the company had now developed a codified Standard Operating System, that can be transferred, translated and adopted by other companies to develop lab-grown leather using LGL’s technology.
He added: “Our tissue engineering technology has the potential to solve some of the fashion industry’s greatest ethical and environmental challenges. Technological development is progressing at an impressive speed, and the process is now ready to advance from inside our research and development lab to a pilot-scale manufacturing operation to facilitate knowledge on scale-up processes as well as supply limited amounts to partners within the fashion industry.“
LGL’s tissue-engineered skin uses only immortalised cells – isolated and collected from an adult animal following a strict and painless bioethics process – to produce a tannable skin structure in a lab. LGL’s lab-grown leather does not use any additional supporting materials, such as plastics or cellulose in the final skin product. The process makes use of a serum-free and animal-free cell culture media supplement, City-mix, which accelerates tissue formation while reducing the cost of the production process. Similar to farm-grown leather, this lab-grown material is expected to be completely biodegradable in 10-50 years.