A female-founded Bristol company that launched with an insulated partition wall grown from fungi, agricultural and industrial waste, has secured £4m in funding to scale up production.

It brings the total funding secured by Mykor, founded in 2021, to £7.5m, comprising £5.5m in equity investment and £2m in grant funding.

The round was led by Clean Growth Fund, with participation from the British Business Bank’s South Investment Fund via The FSE Group, Green Angel Ventures, and support from Innovate UK’s investor partnership programme.

The company’s proprietary technologies use engineered mycelium strains and industrial biomass residues that would otherwise go to landfill or be incinerated.

It says its first product, a partition wall called MykoSIP, achieves a carbon saving of around 23kg of CO2 per sq m compared with incumbent systems, equating to at least 50% carbon savings.

That saving is higher when the biogenic carbon storage of its inputs is factored in, the company says.

It says the panels have the same performance as polystyrene-based panels, but use 90% less water and 40% less electricity to make.

They’re mould-free, breathable, and don’t emit toxins as they degrade like synthetic insulation products, it adds.

Agreements worth £338m

The company says it’s already supplying construction projects and has secured two large agreements worth £338m with UK and European contractors.

“We’ve built Mykor around the idea that decarbonising construction cannot come at the expense of cost, performance or practicality,” said co-founder and chief executive Olivia Page.

“The challenge has never just been inventing a biomaterial; it’s been manufacturing these systems at an industrial scale and integrating them into real construction supply chains. This funding allows us to scale that model further alongside major contractors and manufacturing partners globally.

“We’re very pleased to be working with investors who understand both the urgency of the problem and the scale of the opportunity ahead.”

Susannah McClintock, investment partner at Clean Growth Fund, said: “Mykor addresses one of construction’s most pressing challenges: reducing embodied carbon without adding cost or complexity. Their solution integrates seamlessly into existing building practices and is cost-competitive with conventional materials, delivering meaningful carbon savings without adding cost.”