Smart Tools for a Plastic-Free Future

Materia Bioworks Inc. (Materia) is reshaping the future of sustainable product development. Powered by a computational platform and two-sided biomaterials marketplace, Materia enables consumer brands and manufacturers to bring eco-friendly products to market faster, smarter, and more affordably. From packaging and cosmetics to textiles and biomedical applications, Materia is accelerating the global shift away from petroleum plastics—making sustainability scalable, accessible, and impactful. 

CHEManager: What’s driving consumer brands and product manufacturers to replace petroleum plastics with sustainable alternatives? 

Hasitha De Alwis: Brands are under rising pressure to eliminate petroleum plastics from their products by 2030 due to net-zero targets, single-use plastic bans, and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws — which require companies to manage the full lifecycle of their products or risk paying fines and fees. Biomaterials offer a powerful solution: they can replace petroleum plastics without compromising functionality. But adoption remains slow. These materials behave differently, require advanced R&D, and can be costly. With the global plastics market nearing $1T the opportunity is massive. 

What was the motivation behind founding Materia Bioworks? 

H. De Alwis: As the founding team of a Series A bioplastics company, we previously developed four biodegradable products with top-tier brands pursuing ambitious ESG goals — and saw firsthand how hard these solutions were to implement. Even with significant resources, projects took years and millions of dollars due to fragmented supply chains, high development costs, and limited material readiness. We built Materia to solve this by combining our deep materials development expertise into a software platform, with an integrated marketplace, to make sustainable innovation faster, cheaper, and data-driven.

What’s the unique advantage of your approach? 

H. De Alwis: Materia delivers an end-to-end solution from ideation to product launch. Our proprietary R&D pipeline enables companies to rapidly test and de-risk materials using real-world data. With a click, they get tailored recom­mendations, faster iterations, and shorter timelines. What once took years can now be done in  months.  

How do brands, manufacturers, and suppliers benefit from working with you? 

H. De Alwis: We help companies explore and validate biomaterials based on performance, cost, availability, and verified sustainability — without committing to a single supplier. This multi-sourcing strategy is key in today’s unpredictable supply chains. 

Brands: We identify scalable, process-ready materials that cut R&D costs, accelerate time-to-market, and align with sustainability goals via access to a vetted supplier network. 

Manufacturers: We simplify material adoption with data-backed insights — reducing downtime, scrap rates, and optimizing drop-in solutions for  manufacturing integration. 

Suppliers: We help unlock high-value applications and boost demand by connecting materials to downstream customers, our pipeline, and marketplace.

What challenges have you encountered? 

H. De Alwis: Education. That’s where we come in as the bridge between R&D, product development, procurement, and supply chain. We simplify decision-making and spped up execution. 

What’s next for Materia? 

H. De Alwis: We’re scaling quickly. We’re expanding our SaaS platform, onboarding top-tier suppliers, and growing global R&D partnerships.  We’re running customer projects with leading brands to validate our impact, and we’re raising a seed round in 2026 to grow our team and technology.  We’re always open to working with partners ready to make sustainability their competitive edge.

The Materia team previously co-founded a Series A bioplastics company, scaling breakthrough PHA technology with global brands.