The Turkish leather manufacturer is combining its industrial infrastructure with Gozen's biofabrication technology to bring Lunaform material to global brands, with Kering among its first commercial clients.

PARIS — Desa, Turkey’s leading leather manufacturer, is putting its industrial infrastructure behind a potential alternative to animal leather with the launch of Nuera, a biofabrication venture designed to bring next-generation biomaterials into commercial production.

The venture brings together biotechnology company Gozen’s Lunaform biomaterial and proprietary BioCraft technology with Desa’s established leather-processing, finishing and product-manufacturing capabilities, creating an integrated operation that takes the material from biofabrication through to finished goods.

Nuera will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of the publicly listed Desa, and hold the exclusive global rights to produce and commercialize Lunaform under a long-term licensing agreement with Gozen.

Nuera is entering the market after technology has outpaced adoption, and several promising next-gen materials companies have gone under.

“The biggest problem with next-gen materials right now is credibility,” said Desa chief executive officer Burak Çelet, noting that several promising technologies failed because they could not scale.

“Many valuable innovations have emerged in recent years, yet no product has fully succeeded in making the leap from lab scale to industrial mass production,” Çelet claimed.

He said that his evaluation of competing technologies over the past five years focused not only on their sustainability credentials but also on whether they could meet the physical performance, financial and manufacturing requirements of established materials. For him, Lunaform’s compatibility with conventional tannery processes was a decisive advantage.

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