Traditional leather production is incredibly water-intensive and relies on toxic chemicals and heavy metals. That harms ecosystems and has serious health consequences for the craftspeople and tannery workers who work with it. Existing alternatives have not solved the problem: most are still made from petroleum-based feedstocks (plastic!), and newer approaches like cell-based and fermentation remain expensive while falling short on performance. One of the world’s most desired materials still has no good alternative.

The leather goods market is over $500bn annually but the production process has largely remained the same for centuries. That fixed recipe has capped the material’s potential: it depends on chromium and heavy metals so toxic that tannery workers die at twice the rate of the population (many before fifty) and is centered around finishing an animal’s hide, rather than tuning a collagen based material from the bottom up. PACT’s platform matches or beats leather on performance, costs less to make, and is non-toxic to workers or the planet — a material with the qualities people already want and none of the limits that held the old supply chain back.

Yudi grew up in rural China, a standout student and concert pianist. He was the only non-French speaking student in his chemical engineering class at Ecole Polytechnique and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge in Organic Chemistry. Yudi is a quadruple threat with exceptional range: he’s a formidable leader, a designer with discerning taste, a material scientist and chemist.

PACT’s innovative biomaterials outperform incumbent materials while being produced at a much lower cost. They plan to leverage the same highly scalable process to produce a wide range of products, customising everything from the thickness of the material through to the patterns. This versatility allows them to produce materials for fashion, footwear, automotive and homewares.