The Authentic Material factory makes new materials and objects from natural waste, such as shells or wood. The company gradually specialized in leather, creating a recovery sector that did not exist until then. Its president, Vincent Menny, presents his choice of leather and more generally of recycling natural materials at the French Touch.

“When you make a high-end leather goods, you use what you need to make the bag. The rest, the skeleton, you throw away, which represents at least 50% of the initial piece. This represents pharaonic volumes and a net loss for the customer”, points out Vincent Menny, president ofAuthentic Material.

Created in 2016, this natural materials factory specializes in the recovery of waste, and has for several years focused particularly on one material: leather. Located in Portet-sur-Garonne, south of Toulouse, the company of 13 people often collects waste directly from its customers, the French luxury houses, to manufacture new materials and products. For Vincent Menny, “It’s a virtuous loop, we work in a circular way. »

Leather, horn, shell, wood… Authentic Material processes various materials

The factory began working with horn, then became interested in all types of natural materials, from shell to wood, including porcelain, thanks to different sources of supply. “We use grinding technologies, then create materials from these shreds”, explains Vincent Menny.
As the company's material recovery methods can be transposed to leather, Authentic Material was interested in this material with its many advantages. “Leather is rot-proof and durable due to its tanning, and the deposits of its waste are monstrous. However, it did not have a recovery sector strictly speaking,” contextualizes the president. Today, 90% of the volume processed by the company is leather.

A first factory which processes 150 tonnes of leather waste per year

Describing herself recently as a “start-up with intellectual property and good ideas”, Authentic Material has migrated to a more industrial model with the start-up of its first factory in October 2023, near Toulouse. “We receive square meters of leather from our customers who are our primary suppliers and we process them to create new ones”, explains Vincent Menny. Both a laboratory and a demonstrator, the factory has a capacity of around 150 tonnes of processing per year, “which is sufficient to carry out an industrial demonstration but not yet to process all the deposits of leather from luxury houses across France and Europe”, declares the entrepreneur.

In its factory, Authentic Material begins by crushing waste. “Our materials are crushed and conditioned to arrive calibrated to a particle size fine enough to be interesting to process. Grinding leather is not an easy exercise because it is a material that is both resistant and flexible”, indicates Vincent Menny.

Two ranges of materials: plastic loaded with leather and recycled leather

In its factory, the company creates two ranges of materials. The first is intended to replace plastic from petrochemicals. “We reduce the fiber to powder then mix it with biosourced plastics from plant synthesis or recycled plastics from recycling channels. The final mix is ​​a plastic loaded with leather at almost 50%, itself recyclable”, explains Vincent Menny. The objects thus designed can have any possible shape, ranging from a pair of glasses to a BIC pen.

The second range is 100% natural, without additives, binders or glue. “We will press, heat and cool the material to obtain blocks of 2D or 3D materials depending on the shape of the object we want to create. We can talk here aboutcrafts », proclaims the entrepreneur. The company thus manufactures fashion accessories, brooches, decorative objects, with a feel and smell of leather.

Material recipes developed in its R&D center

Authentic Material has its own research and development, prototyping and design center. “It was by developing physico-chemical methods and designing new recipes using materials that we became known, and it was subsequently that we decided to industrialize our processes,” explains the president of the company. Our processes consume few resources, for example we use a liter of water to grind approximately two tonnes of leather, that's very little. »

The upstream treatment of the leather conditions what is recovered behind it, as Vincent Menny explains: “By sorting the stock upstream, we can separate the types of hides, tanning and color, which will have an influence on the final product and its color. By taking processed run-of-the-mill material from the same batch, the black-brown material obtained will be of little interest. »

If the brand does exist as such, the company's raison d'être is more the promotion of its new materials through a creative approach.