Leather waste company wins place on LVMH start-up programme
A Toulouse-based company that collects waste and unwanted leather for reuse has won a place on the 2022 edition of an acceleration programme called La Maison des Startups.
Luxury group LVMH launched the programme four years ago, selecting start-ups to work with representatives of its own brands for a period of six months. Originally, companies that won a place occupied a space at Station F, a business-incubator site in the south-east of Paris. Since 2020, start-ups have also been able to take part remotely.
LVMH received more than 400 applications for this new programme and, from these has selected a cohort of 23 companies.
One of these, Authentic Material, collects leather from tanneries, traders and finished product manufacturing sites and gathers up scraps and whole hides that have failed quality-tests or are surplus stock. It works with a partner to disassemble unwanted finished products to recover the material they are made from and is currently studying the possibility of carrying out this disassembly work itself.
It processes the waste it collects, combining the leather with plant-based polymers to make new raw materials for finished product brands to use.
Authentic Material says its aim is not to compete with finished leather but just to create value out of waste.
