Huue and Ginkgo Bioworks Partner to Accelerate Production of Sustainable Dyes

Ginkgo Bioworks, Inc. (“Ginkgo”), which is building the leading horizontal platform for cell programming, today announced a new cell program in partnership with Huue, a biotech startup that’s pioneering sustainable bio-based dyes for the fashion industry and beyond. Ginkgo, which recently announced a business combination with Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: SRNG), serves customers across industries seeking to develop new and better products using biology.

Indigo is the dye responsible for giving denim its iconic blue. However, manufacturing the dye that powers the billion pairs of jeans produced annually is responsible for over 1.4 million metric tons of CO2 and utilizes toxic chemicals including benzene, formaldehyde, and sodamide.

Using its proprietary biosynthetic dye-making process, Huue produces indigo that’s just as effective as conventional solutions — without the environmental impact and harmful chemicals. By leveraging Ginkgo’s microbial engineering platform and its strain optimization capabilities, Huue expects to accelerate the production of its dyes for its first partners in 2021 and 2022.

“We are thrilled to welcome Huue onto our platform to enable them to bring sustainable practices to historically toxic manufacturing processes,” […] “We believe that synthetic biology has incredible power to help virtually any industry reimagine how they approach product innovation, and we are honored to be able to support innovators like Huue to grow their apps.”
said Jason Kelly, CEO at Ginkgo Bioworks.

“We’re excited to work with a sustainability-minded company like Ginkgo Bioworks to bring the world’s first sustainable and scalable indigo to the denim industry,” […] “The planet can’t wait any longer for sustainable solutions, and it’s through partnerships like this one that we’re accelerating the production of our bio-based dyes for the industries that need them the most.”
said Michelle Zhu, CEO and co-founder at Huue.

Organizations, government agencies, and companies across numerous industries use Ginkgo’s cell programming platform to find more effective, environmentally friendly ways to create products including food ingredients, fragrances, cosmetics, medicines, and more. By enabling the design of organisms that can produce valuable biological products, Ginkgo helps accelerate the development of innovative, bio-based solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

About Huue
Huue uses biotechnology to create the world’s most sustainable dyes for the industries that are shaping the future of Earth. Based on UC Berkeley-invented bioengineering research, Huue is supported by world class investors and institutions including IndieBio, Fashion for Good, and Melinda Gates’ and Microsoft’s Female Founders Competition. Learn more at https://www.huue.bio/.

About Ginkgo Bioworks

Ginkgo is building a platform to enable customers to program cells as easily as we can program computers. The company’s platform is enabling biotechnology applications across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to industrial chemicals to pharmaceuticals. Ginkgo has also actively supported a number of COVID-19 response efforts, including K-12 pooled testing, vaccine manufacturing optimization and therapeutics discovery. In May 2021, Ginkgo announced a business combination with Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: SRNG), which, if completed, will result in Ginkgo, through a parent entity, Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings, Inc., becoming a public company. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals, and other customary closing conditions. For more information, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com.

MEDIA CONTACT:

press@ginkgobioworks.com