Teysha is moving from bioplastic “claims” to real polymer chemistry. What scientific breakthrough or design principle has been most critical in making your tunable, biodegradable polymers truly scalable for mass manufacturing?
The pivotal breakthrough was in treating sugar molecules as modular platforms, maintaining and harnessing their rich chemical functionality. Dr. Karen Wooley’s pioneering research in sugar- and chitin-based biodegradable polymers underpins Teysha Technologies’ mission to create high-performance, renewable, and fully degradable alternatives to conventional plastics. That meant three linked design moves: developing sugar-derived monomers that are chemically robust, easy to purify and tolerant of industrial conditions; designing polymerisation pathways that deliver tight control of molar mass and reproducible backbone architectures (so mechanical properties and hydrolysable linkage density scale predictably); and building the mechanism of degradation into the backbone in a way that can be controlled by composition and removing any need for post-processing. Together these principles let us move from ‘claims’ to reproducible materials: we can define target monomer ratios, hit them consistently in polymer batches, and then translate those batches to standard downstream formats (pellets, dispersions, films) without bespoke equipment. Equally important was process chemistry optimisation: lower-temperature, high-yield routes and continuous-friendly syntheses have reduced energy use and enabled more cost-effective scale-up. In short: modular monomer design + controlled polymer architecture + scalable, high-yield chemistry = commercial-grade, tunable biodegradable polymers.
What have been the biggest technical or engineering surprises in translating your lab-developed monomer chemistry into full industrial production lines?
As we move from laboratory development into kilogram-scale production and early scale-up trials, the main learning has been understanding which elements of the chemistry translate cleanly and which require re-thinking as volumes increase. The key challenges we are encountering are very typical of the journey from lab to industry. Processes that work well at small scale, particularly around purification, solvent use and recycling need to be redesigned to balance performance, cost and efficiency at higher volumes. Finding the right level of purity, rather than maximum purity, is an important part of this, as it has a direct impact on both scalability and economics. Solvent recovery and reuse are another major focus, as it is essential for reducing cost and improving overall process sustainability. Our ongoing trials are helping us identify where simplification, standardisation and process optimisation will unlock further cost reductions and enable industrial deployment.
Many bioplastics still fail on either performance or end-of-life. From your perspective, what specific performance gaps in today’s PLA, PHA or starch-based materials most urgently need solving—and how does your chemistry tackle them differently?
Many of today’s bioplastics, PLA, PHA and starch-based materials, struggle with critical performance gaps, from brittleness and heat sensitivity to poor water resistance, inconsistent mechanical properties and limited real-world biodegradation. At Teysha, we see the most urgent needs as tunable mechanical performance, predictable end-of-life behaviour, stronger barrier properties, compatibility with existing manufacturing and scalable feedstocks that don’t compete with food. Our sugar-derived polymer platform tackles these differently through modular chemistry that lets us design mechanical strength, flexibility, thermal stability and barrier performance into the material rather than accept the constraints of a single fixed polymer. This tunability allows us to engineer plastics ranging from rigid, ABS-like components to flexible, PET-like films while ensuring biodegradability is built into the backbone and that the timeline can be adjusted to suit the application, from months for coatings to years for durable goods. Unlike many biopolymers, KarmaCane processes on standard equipment and is made from agricultural by-products, enabling performance that matches fossil plastics without locking in permanent waste.
Teysha’s platform is based on agricultural waste feedstocks. What characteristics make a waste stream viable for your polymers, and how do you balance material variability while maintaining predictable performance?
For us, a waste stream becomes viable when it contains sugar-rich, renewable building blocks that can be cleanly extracted and consistently converted into our monomers, typically residues like cassava peels, sugar-cane bagasse or other carbohydrate-heavy by-products. The key characteristics we look for are high polysaccharide content, reliable local availability and a supply chain that doesn’t compete with food production. Because agricultural waste is naturally variable, our platform is engineered to isolate and standardise the critical chemical precursors before polymerisation, meaning fluctuations in the raw biomass don’t translate into fluctuations in material performance. By tightly controlling the monomer ratios and polymer architecture, we ensure that every batch of KarmaCane meets the same mechanical, thermal and biodegradation specification, allowing us to embrace diverse waste streams while delivering predictable, application-specific performance at scale.
You talk about ‘tunable’ polymers. Can you share an example of how you adjust mechanical properties—like strength, flexibility or degradation rate—to meet the needs of a particular packaging application?
One of the advantages of our modular, plug-and-play chemistry is that we can design performance directly from the monomer level. Our platform uses our monomers derived from starches and agricultural waste, and other commercially available bio-derived co-monomers, from which we control the formulation and polymerisation conditions to create tunable, biodegradable polycarbonates that go beyond what PLA or PHA can offer. For flexible coatings, we increase the proportion of flexible monomer units, while our more rigid materials contain a higher proportion of rigid monomer components. By adjusting the density of hydrolysable linkages, the hydrophobicity of the polymer, and the overall polymer architecture, we can tune the degradation timeline from months to years, preventing the microplastic persistence seen in conventional plastics. This ability to dial in mechanical properties and end-of-life behaviour within one polymer family is what makes the platform so versatile.
Cost is still a barrier in sustainable materials. Now that multiple manufacturing lines are coming online, how close are you to achieving cost parity with mainstream plastics—and what remaining factors influence that?
Cost remains a fundamental challenge across all sustainable materials, and we are careful not to frame cost parity with mainstream petrochemical plastics as an immediate or singular goal. Petrochemical polymers benefit from long-established infrastructure, highly optimised global supply chains and ongoing structural support for fossil-based feedstocks, which continues to influence market pricing and our unsustainable reliance on fossil-fuels.
Ultimately, cost is shaped not only by chemistry and manufacturing efficiency, but by broader system factors, including access to funding, policy support for renewable feedstocks and how quickly sustainable materials are prioritised within existing supply chains. With continued scale-up and the right market conditions, materials like KarmaCane can compete effectively in the growing market for specialised and performance-driven bioplastics.
True plastic replacement means real-world compatibility. Which types of existing packaging or manufacturing lines have proven the toughest to integrate with your materials, and what adaptations have been needed?
True plastic replacement depends on how materials behave in real processing environments, and most of our learning to date has come from pilot-scale and prototype trials rather than full commercial production lines. At this stage, the biggest integration challenges are not tied to a specific type of packaging, but to how biopolymers in general respond to repeated heat exposure across standard manufacturing workflows.
Like many biopolymers, KarmaCane can be more sensitive to thermal history than conventional petrochemical plastics. When materials are compounded, pelletised and then reprocessed, sometimes multiple times, there is a need to be strategic about formulations and processing conditions to avoid unnecessary degradation or loss of performance. Addressing this has involved work around master batching strategies, tighter control of processing temperatures, and troubleshooting how different formulations move through each step of the manufacturing chain.
One of KarmaCane’s core strengths is its tunability. By keeping sugar molecules intact rather than breaking them down into simpler intermediates, we retain a wide design space for tailoring material properties, even after polymerisation. This allows a single base chemistry to support multiple end-use requirements.
Your monomers stem from decades of research at Texas A&M. How have academic discoveries been adapted—or reinvented—to meet the reliability, stability and throughput expectations of commercial partners?
The academic work at Texas A&M gave us a powerful conceptual framework: that sugar-derived monomers could form the basis of high-performance, degradable polymers. But translating that into reliable industrial materials required rethinking the chemistry. We redesigned the monomer synthesis to improve purity, stability and scalability, and re-engineered the polymerisation pathways to deliver tighter molecular-weight control and reproducibility. We also built rigorous quality-control systems and accelerated-aging protocols so that every batch behaves predictably across manufacturing environments. In short, we took decades of scientific insight and engineered it for real-world throughput, supply-chain reliability and commercial consistency.
End-of-life is a crowded space with lots of claims. How do you measure and validate biodegradability in real-world conditions, and what standards or testing environments actually matter for meaningful impact?
We focus on standards that reflect true environmental behaviour rather than idealised industrial conditions. Often, the required standards are brought to us by our partners and customers. For example, our initial benchmark was achieving OECD 310 certification with one of our KarmaCane formulations, which measures ready biodegradability in aerobic environments and is important for personal care additives that make their way into municipal waste-water streams. Beyond lab testing, we run controlled field trials that simulate real-world disposal scenarios, soil, compost, freshwater and landfill-adjacent environments, to measure CO₂ evolution, mass loss and microbial activity over time. This testing gives us insight into what each formulation is able to achieve, and specific certifications that are within reach. We are currently working with an outside firm to add composting (ASTM D6400, D6868, and D5338), soil degradation (ASTM D5988), and marine degradation (ASTM 8618 and 8619) certifications to some of our materials. What matters most is whether a material breaks down into non-toxic compounds without leaving microplastics behind. That’s the key threshold we design for and validate against.
You’re operating at the intersection of chemistry, waste valorisation and industrial design. Looking ahead, which emerging technologies or feedstocks do you believe will unlock the next major leap in biodegradable, circular materials?
The biopolymer sector is seeing rapid innovation around fermentation and bio-derived intermediates, and these technologies will continue to play an important role in expanding access to renewable chemical building blocks. Many commercially available bio-based compounds already rely on fermentation pathways, helping to diversify supply away from fossil sources. Teysha Technologies’ approach, however, is intentionally different: we do not use fermentation in our core process and instead preserve sugar molecules intact, retaining their functional tunability as the basis of KarmaCane’s chemistry.
For our platform, the next major leap lies in feedstock sourcing and versatility. Any starch-based waste stream can, in principle, be converted into the sugars we require, from potato waste to other agricultural by-products. The long-term goal is to build a system that can pivot between locally available waste feedstocks, reducing cost, transport emissions and environmental impact while strengthening supply resilience. This adaptability, combining chemistry, waste valorisation and industrial design, is central to scaling truly circular, biodegradable materials.
Interview published by Kevin Gambrill