2023 has been a big year for us so we thought we would include our highlights below!
eBay Circular Fashion Fund Accelerator
SAGES and five oher businesses took part in this initiative in January. Supported by eBay with mentoring from the British Fashion Council, Hubbub and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, this accelerator provided us with much needed funds as well as invaluable business advice.
We also met some amazing other innovators: The Seam, Pip & Henry, Circular Textiles Foundation, Circular Inc and By Rotation.
Cranfield University GFIL TAF Grant Fund
In March, SAGES began work on a 4 month project funded by the GFIL Technology Accelerator Fund at Cranfield University to research filtration methods for our dyes. This grant project came to an end in July and the result was a prototype of a filtration system that we could use to filter out any excess and unnecessary sugars from our dyes. It also started a collaboration between ourselves and researchers at Cranfiled which we are really happy to be pursuing in two further projects. Huge thanks to Cranfield University and the Green Future Investment fund for making this possible.
We won best SEIS Investee Company at the EISA awards!
This was completely unexpected and acted as validation for all the work we've been putting in to SAGES.
Innovate UK NICER and Bio - Materials Grants
Since June, we have been working in two grant projects funded by Innovate UK. The NICER grant awarded us £150k to develop an environmentally friendly fixation for our dyes with researchers at University of Leeds thorugh which we have seen some really exciting developments. This project is ongoing until mid next year.
Work also began on our Innovate UK Bio - Materials grant to find an environmentally friendly way to colour mycelium leather created by Osmose Studio. We’re just wrapping up this project now and are very excited to show you our results in the new year!
New Investment!
In August, we received funding from The Worshipful Company of Dyers and Cranfield University's Seed Investment fund whom we are both incredibly grateful to for their ongoing support.
Institute of Positive Fashion
We were invited to be part of the Institute of Positive Fashion run by the British Fashion Council and took part in the annual Fashion Forum with speakers from Patagonia to Pangaia. Fellow innovators at this event where XEROS, Give Your Best, Redivivum and Pattern Project who are all doing incredible work.
ReLondon Grant
We are also fortunate to have won a grant from ReLondon which will help us save carbon and GHG emissions on our process by implementing a new processing and storgae process for our food waste.
And finally..... Our SMART grant!
As anyone who has completed a SMART grant application knows, they take blood, sweat and tears so having this result come through is the perfect end to a busy year. We will be starting work on this in April and can't wait to start building SAGES into the business we know it can become.
Alongside these milestones we have been hard at work on developing new dyes, improving our tech and developing environmentally-friendly pre-treatments, processes and fixations. We want to thank our incredible researchers at University of Leeds and Cranfield University for their hard work, support and belief in our mission. We have so many exciting things lined up for 2024 and can’t wait to share them with you!