Octarine Bio raises €4.35M to paint a green future for the fashion industry; here’s how

Copenhagen-based Octarine Bio, a synthetic biology platform, announced on Wednesday that it has secured €4.35M ($4.6 million) in the fresh funding round, bringing the total amount raised to over €12M. 

The round was led by Unconventional Ventures, the impact VC firm, alongside Óskare Capital and The Footprint Firm, with participation from dsm-firmenich Venturing. 

The capital infusion will allow Octarine Bio to accelerate and scale its portfolio of flagship products, including optimising colours in preparation for commercialisation.

Nethaji Gallage, CEO and co-founder of Octarine, says, “At Octarine, we are driven by a more sustainable future where pressing environmental and social challenges are met with innovative, game-changing, and sustainable solutions. Octarine’s synthetic biology platform has allowed us to iterate from one ingredient to validate our platform capabilities quickly, and today we collaborate with global industry leaders on the path to commercialisation of our flagship products.”

What does Octarin Bio solve?

The textile industry currently relies heavily on synthetic dyes that are derived from non-renewable petroleum and produced under extreme conditions that release harmful chemicals into the environment. 

This unsustainable production process poses a major environmental threat, contributing to over 2.4 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, 20 per cent of the world’s wastewater, and 35 per cent of all chemicals released into the environment.

 Additionally, synthetic textile dyes are toxic, carcinogenic, and mutagenic. 

Octarine offers a sustainable solution to this problem with its microbially fermented colours, which provide an eco-friendly alternative to the production and dyeing process of textile dyes.

Octarine Bio: Providing nature-based dyes

Led by Nethaji Gallage, Octarine Bio uses its fermentation-based manufacturing platform to create a variety of nature-based dyes in hard-to-find colours with a significantly reduced environmental impact. 

Additionally, the company has developed an innovative dyeing process that enables efficient dyeing of both natural and synthetic fabrics directly, without the need for mordants or other harmful chemicals. 

As per Octarine Bio’s claims, the solution is easily scalable and can be seamlessly integrated into existing supply chains of commercial partners.

Octarine Bio is on a mission to address the significant environmental impact of the textile dyeing industry.

Octarine Bio’s colour program is focused on violacein and its derivatives, providing a highly sought-after and difficult-to-source colour spectrum. 

At the same time, Octarine’s proprietary textile dyeing process further enables a significant reduction in environmental footprint as its colours can be dyed directly onto natural and synthetic fibres under ambient conditions without any additional chemicals or mordants. 

These colours are currently developing rapidly in collaboration with Ginkgo Bioworks, announced earlier this year.

The investors

Unconventional Ventures is a pioneering venture capital firm that invests in scalable impact tech startups in the pre-seed and seed stages with diverse founding teams. 

In September 2023, the firm announced the second close of its €30M impact-focused fund. 

Unconventional Ventures has a team of 10+ and is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Thea Messel, co-founder and general partner at Unconventional Ventures, comments. “The textile industry must switch to a more aggressive decarbonisation trajectory to reduce its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and, ultimately, climate change.”

“Octarine’s ground-breaking technology leads the way in transitioning the industry towards sustainable practices and away from harmful synthetic dyes. With Nethaji and Nick’s expertise, execution power, and visionary leadership, we are confident they will make a lasting impact on the fashion industry, making us a proud backer of Octarine,” adds Messel. 

Alexandre Ouimet-Storrs, President and Co-Founder of Óskare Capital, states, “Óskare Capital scouted and first invested in Octarine three years ago, and they have made phenomenal progress since then, expanding its pipeline and validating its platform beyond initial products. The sustainable dye product line is truly ground-breaking, and we hope to see many more innovative products come to market thanks to Octarine’s strong biotech platform.”