Sustainable Bio-Based Leather Alternative

A new class of high-performance material made from agricultural by-products, designed to be greener, cleaner and more responsible.

Uppeal™ reimagines leather for the future by combining innovation, circularity and real environmental impact reduction, without compromising on performance.

Why Uppeal™ Matters

Traditional leather and synthetic alternatives have environmental challenges:

Animal leather: high water, land use, and ethical concerns
Conventional synthetic leather: fossil fuel–based and resource intensive

Uppeal™ was created to bridge the gap — a bio-based alternative that is responsibly sourced, engineered for durability, and made with less virgin material and lower environmental impact.

What Uppeal™ Is

Uppeal™ is a bio-based leather alternative developed in Italy using upcycled agricultural waste. It is engineered to meet high performance standards, suitable for applications in:

Fashion & Accessories
Automotive Interiors
Furniture & Home
Packaging & Bookbinding

This makes Uppeal™ a versatile choice for designers and manufacturers seeking sustainable materials without compromise.

The process

How it works

Uppeal™ repurposes locally sourced agricultural residues, such as:

Apple pomace

Italy is the seventh World producer and second in Europe of Apples, more than 70% of them is cultivated in the region of South Tyrol. Every year more than 30.000 ton of apple waste are produced.

Bamboo

We use waste from the cultivation of giant bamboo in Italy. Thanks to our partner Forever Bamboo, we are able to give a new life to a flexible and extremely durable material.

Beer

Born from the collaboration with Biotech Materials, we transform what remains from the beer brewing process into a versatile and innovative material.

Seaweed

Waste from organic cultivation of spirulina (in collaboration with the Italian company Becagli), organic polymer from algae, gives life to a 100% sustainable material that will revolutionize the synthetic materials industry.

These bio-based powders become the foundation of the Uppeal™ material.

Environmental Performance

Uppeal™ significantly reduces environmental impact when compared to animal-derived leather and conventional synthetic leather.

Independent Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) by the University of Milan shows that using bio-based inputs in place of traditional materials results in measurable reductions in:

✔ Water consumption
✔ Energy use
✔ Overall environmental footprint