Few start-ups can claim to name coffee giant Starbucks among their customers, but Wellington’s The Formary is one of them.
The company works with clients to transform their industrial waste – mainly fibre waste – into new products.
It made headlines in 2010 when Starbucks said it would upholster chairs at new stores with WoJo, a fabric developed by the start-up made of 70 per cent New Zealand wool woven with jute from recycled coffee sacks.
WoJo was last year named in British design guru and Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud’s top 10 “Green Heroes” list, and could soon be covering chairs in homes around New Zealand and the world, The Formary managing director Bernadette Casey says.
The company has licensed weaving mills including Auckland’s Inter-Weave to manufacture and sell WoJo fabric, and is in talks with potential distributors overseas.
Casey says the start-up approaches its – typically large – clients to see if it can develop a product out of their waste. It then handles the complete process, from design and testing to developing a supply chain for the product through to commercialisation.
The six-person company, which teams up with local and international design and manufacturing partners, looks for products suitable for mainstream commercialisation and tries to set up product supply chains near the waste stream they come from to minimise their carbon footprint.
Business manager Donna Riley says it has five products currently under development including WoJo and CoJac – a jute and waste cotton blend that was also developed in partnership with Starbucks, and makes a canvas fabric for a range of uses including blinds, bags and upholstery.
Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, meaning there is “a lot of coffee sacks out there that need using up”, but the company is also turning its attention to other materials.
It is working with the Chinese government and has received funding from Beef and Lamb New Zealand to develop a clothing and upholstery fabric from New Zealand wool, and straw waste from rice crops in China that would otherwise be burnt.
Consumers and companies are turning off synthetic fibres, she says.
“There’s a growing consumer awareness of the need for eco-textiles and textile manufacturers by and large are responding to that. But our fabric is the only one globally that actually re-uses a product rather than [growing crops for fabric] and putting more pressure on arable land that could be used to grow food.”
