Revolutionary biomaterials
for forward thinkers.
Celium™:
Premium Cultivated Cellulose.
We grow Celium™ by feeding bacteria with agro-industrial fruit waste.
Rooted in biology
Guided by design
Refined into Celium™
Celium™ is a new generation of cultivated materials.
Grown by bacteria nourished with agro-industrial fruit waste, it forms during fermentation as a cultivated sheet of cellulose. This biological origin gives Celium™ a coherent structure that is resilient, soft, and inherently adaptable.
After cultivation, the material undergoes a stabilization process that defines its characteristics. During this stage (our equivalent to tanning), we refine thickness, handfeel, flexibility, and overall performance. Once stabilized, Celium™ can be finished through color, embossing, or protective finishing, extending its visual and functional possibilities while preserving its biological foundation.
Celium™ does not imitate existing materials; it stands as a category of its own. Each sheet carries subtle variations linked to its living origin, resulting in a refined, high-performance material capable of adapting across applications. Cultivated with precision and shaped through intention, Celium™ reflects a new approach to making: one that begins with life and evolves through design.
One material, multiple expressions
Performance Meets Possibility
One cultivated material can take on many roles. Celium™ begins as a cultivated sheet of bacterial cellulose, but its behavior is defined in the hands of designers and makers. It can drape, fold, and stitch like a soft surface, or be structured into precise, architectural forms. The same origin can become a garment panel, a bag shell, a lighting element, or a piece of furniture detailing.
Its versatility comes from how it responds to transformation. Celium™ can be cut cleanly, layered, perforated, embossed, or combined with other substrates to adjust body and support. Surface finishes introduce color, protection, and texture without erasing the material’s depth. This combination of responsiveness and stability makes it suitable for both tactile, close-to-skin pieces and more robust, spatial applications.
Across these uses, Celium™ maintains a coherent identity: a cultivated material with a refined hand, visual definition, and a clear link back to its biological origin. Rather than mimicking existing materials, it gives designers a single, consistent base they can push in multiple directions, exploring new expressions without changing the underlying source.
Where biology meets creativity, the future unfolds.
How to Work with Celium™
Celium™ is available in full sheets, sample kits, or through custom developments. Brands, studios, and independent designers can request materials directly from our team by filling out the inquiry form or contacting orders@polybion.bio.
Each request begins with a short conversation. We help identify the most suitable version of Celium™, discuss quantities, finishing, and timelines, and offer tailored guidance for your intended application. For small developments, the minimum order is two sheets of 17 sq.ft. each, ideal for prototyping. For customized color or material characteristics, the minimum order is 63 sheets. For pricing, please contact our team.
Celium™ is grown to order. Although our production is fully scaled, cultivation happens batch by batch, which means we operate through a delivery pipeline and often work with a waiting list. Once your order enters production, we coordinate cultivation, finishing, and shipment from our headquarters in Mexico to any destination worldwide.
Celium™ is cultivated with care, and so is every collaboration that begins with it.
2025 showed us that Celium™ is not the future of materials
- Published on
- December 16, 2025
Celium™ is not the future of materials. It is the beginning of a new material language.
This year marked a turning point for Celium™. In 2025, we explored Celium™ through more applications, more collaborators, more processes, and more forms than ever before. What started as an alternative to traditional materials has become a category of its own.
From ‘Alternative’ to Its Own Category
Celium™ was once labeled as a “leather alternative”.
Today, that definition no longer holds.
Not because leather has been surpassed, but because Celium™ follows a different material logic. Its cultivated structure enables translucency suitable for lighting design and foam-like expressions that can be used in cosmetics, packaging, consumer products, interior components and dimensional pieces for design and automotive contexts. It also carries an aesthetic that traditional materials cannot replicate.
Where traditional materials are bound by their own nature, Celium™ adapts, reshapes, and evolves.
Material Behaviors and Expansions from 2025
This year expanded our understanding of Celium™. Across our design studio, our facility and our collaborations, the material showed new aesthetic, structural and sensorial behaviors: controlled translucency suitable for lighting, lightweight yet stable structures, clean responses to finishing techniques, forms that hold definition, chromatic results informed by violacein and a foam-like expression with a soft, petal-like tactility.
These qualities proved consistent across more than 100 material applications developed with GANNI, Secrid, Natural Urbano, Someone Somewhere, Sistta, REI Co-op, Veshin, Nous Étudions, Piel Canela, Bala di Gala, Val de Grace, and a growing network of designers and manufacturing partners. Each category, from ready-to-wear and accessories to footwear, interiors, lighting, and outdoor applications, required different construction logics. Celium™ responded to each one in its own way.
A Year Defined by Material Explorations
Throughout 2025, Celium™ took shape across multiple contexts.
Ready-to-Wear
GANNI Signature Blazer; Nous Étudions runway pieces; Val de Grace Blazer.
Accessories & Bagmaking
Bou Bag series; XXL Hobo Bags; cardholders with GANNI, SECRID and Artemio; crossbody bags with Someone Somewhere; clutches and portfolios in multiple finishes.
Footwear
High-top sneakers with SISTTA; ankle boots with Bala di Gala.
Interior & Furniture
The Cuddle Sofa and Fungi Sofa; Lapso Natural and Lapso Humo with Natural Urbano.
Lighting & Object Design
The Cartilage Lamp; lighting explorations enabled by Celium™ Manto’s translucency.
Cosmetics & Consumer Goods
Espumante powder puffs; early foam-like applications for beauty and packaging.
Outdoor & Travel Applications
Roadtripper Pod with REI and Someone Somewhere.
This curated overview reflects the range of applications explored this year. The full catalogue continues to expand as new work is completed.
To Those Building the Future of Materials With Us
Thank you.
To the designers who experiment.
To the engineers who challenge assumptions.
To the manufacturing partners who refine processes with us.
To the brands willing to imagine new material worlds.
You make this mission possible.
At Polybion, we exist to cultivate materials that expand what can be made responsibly, creatively, and scientifically. This year proved that the future does not belong to imitation or substitution. It belongs to materials designed with intention, performance, and imagination.
What Comes Next
In 2026, Celium™ will continue to evolve through new versions, deeper scientific breakthroughs, and collaborations that push performance and aesthetics further.
To everyone who joined us in exploring the potential of Premium Cultivated Cellulose:Thank you for expanding the possible.
Celium™ is not the future of materials.
It is the beginning of a new material language.