AppleSkin™ is an award-winning product, it is a bio-based leather alternative. It is an innovative new material that is made with waste recovered from the fruit juice industry. Made in Italy from apples grown in Bolzano, a city in the north of the country, the material is approximately 20-30% apple. It is vegan and cruelty-free.
Who makes it?
Frumat Leather was founded by Hannes Parth and they are the company behind the Apple Leather. Frumat received the Technology and Innovation Award in 2018 for their innovative textile technology.
Mabel SRL is located in Florence, Italy. Mabel is the company that physically manufactures the AppleSkin material. The process is patented by Frumat.
How is it made?
A mushy pulp (made up of cellulose fibers) is left over as a result of juicing apples on an industrial scale. The AppleSkin material is produced by recovering this waste product, that would otherwise be discarded, and transforming it into the final material.
The precise process is a trade secret, but we do know that to make the leather, the apple waste, from apples cultivated in Italy, is dried and ground into powder. This powder is mixed with pigments and a binder and spread out onto a canvas, until it turns into a leather-like material, which is PETA-approved vegan.
Using the cores and skins discarded from the industrial food industry, apples are puréed, spread on a solid sheet and dehydrated until almost all of the moisture has been removed. This purée turns into a flexible, leathery sheet that is then combined with Polyurethane to create the vegan leather.
Why is it sustainable?
Fewer virgin materials equate to fewer natural resources being extracted from the planet, lower emissions, and lower energy consumption across the entire supply chain.
According LUXTRA "AppleSkin is an attractive, versatile, and high-performance material that upcycles waste material - always a plus in our eyes. It's manufactured in Florence, Italy a mere 6 kilometers from the workshops that create our products, helping to minimize our carbon footprint."