Plastic-Free Performance

Circular Jacket Challenge · Challenge partner: FreyZein (AT)

FreyZein has built a cellulose membrane that gives natural fabrics real weather protection. What is missing is the map: which product, which customer, which moment makes a brand reach for it first.

From fashion brand to ingredient brand

FreyZein is an Austrian material developer building the next generation of natural performance textiles. The company started as a fashion brand, ran into the limits of natural materials in technical apparel, and pivoted: it no longer builds finished products, it enables them.

That makes FreyZein an ingredient brand — its technology sits inside someone else’s garment and lets that brand create products it could not make before, without giving up the look and feel of natural textiles.

S9 is the current platform: windproofing, water resistance and high breathability in two- and three-layer constructions. SX is in development for fully waterproof applications. TerraDown, developed with ESA Space Solutions Austria, explores aerocellulose as a petrochemical-free insulation.

The problem: performance still comes with compromises

Brands can already build most of a collection around natural fibres. The trouble starts when a product needs lightweight, technical weather protection. Modern performance still relies on synthetic membranes, coatings and treatments, and the natural alternatives bring trade-offs in weight, breathability, care or design freedom.

So a product that set out to be natural quietly turns synthetic at the technical layer — sometimes visibly, more often hidden inside the construction. FreyZein attacks that trade-off at the material layer. The open question is no longer whether the technology works. It is where it creates the most compelling product opportunity.

Why this is hard: agreement is not the same as action

Almost no brand needs convincing that depending less on petrochemical materials is desirable. Agreement still does not lead to adoption. The incumbent is proven, priced and understood — designers know it, developers trust it, sourcing can buy it. A new material has to win every one of those decisions before it reaches a customer.

That is harder for an ingredient brand, because the customer never meets FreyZein. They meet a jacket, an overshirt, a trench coat from a brand they already know. And the strongest quality is the one a spec sheet cannot carry: a product that looks, feels and wears like a natural textile while behaving like something far more technical.

Making natural performance obvious means making it the easier product decision, not the better sustainability argument.

What we are looking for

FreyZein already offers partners two ways in: a qualified portfolio of two- and three-layer constructions that can be sampled and tested quickly, or a custom construction built around a brand’s own natural face fabric. What is missing is the map that comes before that choice.

Start with the end customer and work backwards. Show what someone actually wants, in a product they would genuinely buy, and you have built most of the argument a brand needs. We are looking for concrete, feasible proposals — a product concept, a use case, a partner business case, a prototype or a demonstration. Not slide decks with abstract principles.

Find your angle

The prize

{{TBD: Prize noch mit FreyZein zu bestätigen}}

Sign up for the kickoff

Part of the Circular Jacket Challenge, 26–27 November 2026 — a two-day Innovation Sprint under the Interreg Alpine Space project ASTER, powered by InnoDays.