At Arda, we’re changing that. We transform these spent grains into high-value materials—the first being New Grain™, a revolutionary, high-quality, leather-like material that bypasses the need for animal leather and its plastic-derived counterparts.
Whether for fashion, automotive, furniture upholstery, or any other uses, New Grain™ is being developed to adapt to diverse applications, offering a high-performance material that can thrive in its scalability, style, and functionality.
Like leather New Grain™ is made of protein—it just comes from plants instead.
One of the key advantages of New Grain™ is its versatility. Our process is highly customisable, enabling various textures, thicknesses, and tailored performance properties to meet application needs.
Although New Grain™ is not yet commercially available, we have begun in-house testing on small products and are engaged in exciting collaborations.
First up: a partnership with BEEN London, where we developed a stunning snakeskin texture using our signature New Grain™ formulation and crafted it into BEEN’s bestselling Millais bag. This is the first of a future collection, so keep your eyes peeled for more!
The versatility of our material means we’re not just preventing the sale of animal skins (e.g. cows, pigs, goats) from bolstering the profits of factory farms—we’re also protecting exotic animals too whose skins have been highly prized in luxury fashion (e.g. snakes, ostriches, crocodiles, kangaroos).
Next up, a collaboration with Beavertown—a Heineken-owned brewery in London.
We transformed Beavertown’s spent grains into a series of unique cardholders customised with Beavertown’s signature skull and bones branding laser-engraved onto the material.
While the cardholders are not for sale yet, they mark a unique selling point where Arda can craft materials and products for breweries, whisky distilleries, and their customers.
Our team of scientists conduct rigorous tests, both in-house and with external partners, to ensure that our material meets the demands of different industries and the varied properties each requires.
To ensure we create high-performing and versatile materials, we are constantly working on improving our material so it reaches better characteristics across tensile strength, tear strength, elongation, drape, abrasion resistance, hand feel, colour, smell, and more.