In the UK, Saltyco Ltd trading as "Ponda", the biomaterials company behind "BioPuff", a plant-based insulation made from fibres extracted from the common bulrush grown on restored wetlands through paludiculture, is building a model in which restored wetlands become viable material supply chains for the fashion industry.
Wetlands store more than twice the carbon of all the world’s trees combined, but once drained, they release 1.9 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year, around twice fashion’s total emissions.
Ponda is a biomaterials company developing regenerative materials for the textile industry. Its first product, “BioPuff”, is a plant-based insulation made from fibres extracted from bulrush grown on restored wetlands through paludiculture.
Crowdfunding campaign
Ponda’s approach keeps wetlands wet, puts them to work. The company has opened a crowdfunding campaign to scale the impact and influence of its regenerative projects.
The raise will support the next stage of manufacturing, operational capacity and market readiness needed to expand Ponda’s paludiculture system: the model that links wetland restoration with fibre production, regional jobs and next-generation insulation for fashion.
Developing a complete value chain
Through Palus Demos, the four-year, €10 million Horizon Europe programme investigating paludiculture across large demonstrator sites in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands; PaluWise, focused on scaling practical wet farming systems; and the Paludiculture Exploration Fund, the UK government-backed programme delivered by Natural England, Ponda has developed the capability to sow, grow, harvest and process wetland biomass into fibre.
Its work spans drone-sown seed pellets, low-impact harvesting, pilot manufacturing in Bristol and a growing network of harvest sites, helping build the supply chain needed to take paludiculture from concept to commercial delivery.
What is important about Ponda’s work is that it helps show restored wetlands do not have to be separated from economic use. By developing scalable approaches to growing, harvesting and processing wetland biomass, the company is contributing to a model in which ecological restoration and productive land use are not in conflict, but can be designed to support one another, said William Barnard, Owner, J & K Barnard.
Across these programmes, Ponda has worked with organisations including Lancashire Wildlife Trust, Manchester Metropolitan University, Liverpool John Moores University, landowners, farming operators and other delivery partners.
Together, the work is helping answer a pressing question for climate-exposed and ecologically fragile landscapes: what forms of production still make sense on wetter land?
What makes this work significant is that it moves paludiculture beyond theory and into delivery. Through large-scale projects, Ponda is helping demonstrate the systems needed to make rewetted land productive, from crop establishment and harvesting through to fibre processing and end use. That kind of practical evidence is essential if paludiculture is to be taken seriously as a viable long-term land-use model, said Sarah Johnson, Head of Peatland Nature Recovery, Lancashire Wildlife Trust.
Tested by several clothing brands
BioPuff has already been used by brands including Stella McCartney, Berghaus, Ahluwalia and Sheep Inc., showing how wetland-grown fibres can move beyond demonstration and into real product development.
For Ponda, the significance goes well beyond one material.
Making restored wetlands commercially viable requires new infrastructure across seed development, land management, harvesting, transport, fibre processing and manufacturing.
As that system grows, it has the potential to create skilled rural and regional jobs rooted in landscape restoration rather than depletion.
For too long, wetlands have been treated as land that only becomes valuable once it is drained, controlled or converted to something else. That thinking has done enormous damage. What we are showing instead is that these landscapes can stay wet, recover ecological function and still support meaningful forms of production, said Julian Ellis-Brown, Co-founder and CEO of Ponda.
By opening its crowdfunding campaign, Ponda is inviting innovators, industry and the wider community to support the next phase of a model that connects climate action, biodiversity recovery, regional employment and material innovation.
The goal is not simply to grow BioPuff, but to scale the infrastructure needed to make restored wetlands relevant to the future of fashion and land use alike.
This is no longer a theoretical proposition. Across multiple large-scale programmes, we have helped demonstrate the supply chain needed to make paludiculture work in practice, from crop establishment and harvesting through to fibre processing and end use. This raise is about scaling that model so restored wetlands can become economically viable working landscapes again, said Julian Ellis-Brown.
