Desa and Gozen Bet on Biomaterials With Launch of Nuera

PARIS — Desa, Turkey’s leading leather manufacturer, is putting its industrial infrastructure behind a potential alternative to animal leather with the launch of Nuera, a biofabrication venture designed to bring next-generation biomaterials into commercial production.

The venture brings together biotechnology company Gozen’s Lunaform biomaterial and proprietary BioCraft technology with Desa’s established leather-processing, finishing and product-manufacturing capabilities, creating an integrated operation that takes the material from biofabrication through to finished goods.

Nuera will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of the publicly listed Desa, and hold the exclusive global rights to produce and commercialize Lunaform under a long-term licensing agreement with Gozen.

Nuera is entering the market after technology has outpaced adoption, and several promising next-gen materials companies have gone under.

“The biggest problem with next-gen materials right now is credibility,” said Desa chief executive officer Burak Çelet, noting that several promising technologies failed because they could not scale.

“Many valuable innovations have emerged in recent years, yet no product has fully succeeded in making the leap from lab scale to industrial mass production,” Çelet claimed.

He said that his evaluation of competing technologies over the past five years focused not only on their sustainability credentials but also on whether they could meet the physical performance, financial and manufacturing requirements of established materials. For him, Lunaform’s compatibility with conventional tannery processes was a decisive advantage.

Nuera’s big bet is that combining Gozen’s biofabrication technology with Desa’s 50-plus years of manufacturing expertise can help bridge that gap.

The platform secured its first commercial orders from Kering for its S|Style 2026 Wardrobe Edition, which took place during Milan Fashion Week. Featured designers Lorenzo Seghezzi and Ayham Hassan selected Lunaform, with Seghezzi using it for a structured corset and pleated tutu, and Hassan for a softer, translucent design, highlighting the material’s range of applications.

Çelet added they are developing products with an additional 16 clients across the luxury fashion and automotive industries.

The platform is meant to address the gap between material innovation and what luxury brands actually need from suppliers.

“It’s not enough to supply just the material, you also have to help clients understand how to use it properly,” he said. “And it’s not enough just to label something sustainable to make it commercial. It really has to hit all the right points and all the KPIs that are expected by the market.”

Gozen CEO Ece Gozën said Nuera’s focus will be to secure repeat orders by building long-term relationships with brands and establishing confidence in the platform, rather than expanding capacity immediately.

“Just sending new materials to designers is not enough to create a great business success,” she said. “Brands want support from customization to finished product.”

Before launching Nuera, Çelet and Gozën spent nearly a year meeting with brands. Luxury companies are looking for bespoke colors, textures and finishes, alongside technical support and rapid development, they said.

Nuera is thus set up to accommodate those requirements, including customized development without minimum order quantities, and will use the resulting work to improve its commercially available materials. Brands can also have products manufactured at Desa’s facilities in Turkey and Italy, reducing the need to coordinate with multiple suppliers.

The launch is also a strategic response to the longer-term prospects and uncertainties facing the leather industry, Çelet said.

Leather is a byproduct of the meat industry, meaning shifts in consumption patterns and alternative proteins could eventually affect the availability of animal skin. Changing consumer expectations and increasingly stringent environmental requirements are also pushing manufacturers to reassess their dependence on traditional materials.

“With global warming, with all the pushback that’s happening, with the newest technological developments, I see that within the foreseeable future, the supply of leather is going to shrink,” he predicted. “The other part is that raising cattle takes at least a year. Lunaform we can grow within seven days. It has a lot of interesting additional points in terms of sustainability. So this is really about future-proofing our business.”

Çelet added that next-gen biomaterials are an opportunity for traditional tanneries to adapt and diversify, and since Lunaform is “plug-and-play” and can be processed using conventional machinery, it could potentially allow other established manufacturers to enter the next-gen category without significant capital outlay.

“We have to fix the roof while it’s not raining,” he said, adding the industry should prepare for structural changes before they become immediate commercial pressures.

The longer-term ambition is to move beyond luxury, which Çelet views as the initial market for establishing the material, and eventually compete with petroleum-based polyurethane alternatives.

As production scales, the company aims to reduce costs to put it on par with petroleum-based materials, while continuing to meet the performance standards required by brands. “First performance, then price,” he said.

Additional commercial adoption announcements are expected in 2027.

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