Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of spider silk, announced that it received its first small shipment of spider silk from Prodigy Textiles, its wholly owned Vietnamese subsidiary.
Kraig Biocraft said it has received fiber requests from a broad range of interested parties, including companies that produce products in the fields of sports apparel, industrial textiles, first responder supplies and medical products. In order to meet this demand, the company established Prodigy Textiles to scale up the production of its recombinant spider silk fibers, threads and textiles.
Kraig’s operations at its Prodigy Textiles facility are now moving forward to significantly expand the company’s spider silk production. The company expects to begin filling the backlog of material requests, including requests from Polartec LLC and MtheMovement, as this added capacity comes online.
Last month, Kraig Biocraft formed a joint venture partnership with MtheMovement, an eco-friendly luxury streetwear apparel line, part of the Kings Group of Companies. The joint venture will develop and sell Kraig Labs’ spider silk fibers under the new innovative apparel and fashion brand, trade named SpydaSilk and potential other trademarks to be announced.
All intellectual property related to SpydaSilk will be jointly owned by Kraig Labs and Kings Group. Under the terms of this agreement, Kraig Labs granted the joint venture and the SpydaSilk brand an exclusive geographic license to all Kraig Lab technologies for the ASEAN region, in exchange for a four-year commitment to purchase up to $32 million, with an additional projected purchase of $8 million, of Kraig Labs’ raw recombinant spider silk, with an initial payment of $250,000.
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“SpydaSilk’s mission is to create high-impact products and technologies, so partnering with Kings Group, which we believe has strong product development expertise and intense understanding of ASEAN market, is a powerful combination that we believe will drive SpydaSilk’s sales and innovation,” said Kim Thompson, Kraig Labs’ founder and CEO. “Spider silk is among the strongest fibers produced in nature and the agreement represents the world’s first large-scale commitment to purchase spider silk fibers.”
The new SpydaSilk alliance combines the strengths of both companies and calls on Kraig Labs to provide fibers and materials expertise, while Kings Group will lead the marketing, sales, and distribution. The two companies will work together to increase Kraig Labs’ product development agility and production scalability.
“I want to thank the Prodigy Textiles team for making this milestone possible and setting the stage for our expansion,” Jon Rice, the company’s chief operations officer, said of the most recent development. “This helps us transition from being the leading developer of spider silk technologies to the producer and supplier of high quality spider silk fibers. Now we can focus on meeting the substantial demand for spider silk and solidifying market channel partnerships to reach our goal to develop and bring new products to market.”