The company manufactures biodegradable textile fibres for use in fashion and high-performance material applications.

The prize is awarded each year to the world’s top nature-inspired start-up after 10 finalist teams conclude a 10-week accelerator programme. This year, Spintex and nine other participating companies were selected from a pool of 301 applicants from 49 countries.

The secret to a spider's ability to create silk lies within their spinnerets, specialised organs that turn the liquid silk gel held in the spider’s abdomen into a solid thread. After years of research, Spintex says it can mimic the spider's ability and has created a process to spin textile fibres from a liquid gel, at room temperature, with water and biodegradable textile fibres as the only outputs.

As the company grows, its goal is to create high-performance textiles with properties such as stretch and embedded colour while creating biodegradable and non-bioaccumulating textiles.

Alex Greenhalgh, CEO and co-founder of Spintex, said: “Going through the Ray of Hope program has been a fantastic experience. It’s been wonderful to see such a wide variety of great start-ups focused on using nature’s lessons to build the future.”

Image: Spintex