Jump to New Zealand, 2001 - With support from the New Zealand wool industry, Keratec began groundbreaking research to identify industrial processes for functional Keratin proteins’ isolation and commercialisation of these discoveries.

When Keraplast from the USA & Keratec from New Zealand met in the early 2000s, a strong partnership evolved. This resulted, several years later, in the merging of the businesses into one entity with an international patent portfolio of over 130 individual patents in 36 patent families.

Production is centred in Christchurch, New Zealand, a recognised hub of excellence in agricultural research allied with Lincoln University.

New Zealand sourced wool is shorn sustainably from sheep at the start of each Kiwi summer, ensuring the sheep survive the summer heat while growing a new coat in time to be well protected for winter.

For the past 20 years, Keraplast has manufactured branded ingredients for distribution amongst the world’s leading health, nutrition and personal care companies. Our innovative technology and extensive body of research have led us to become the world’s leading innovator of keratin protein technology.

We are ambitious to disrupt and make a real difference in people’s lives; we care about people and wish to support and empower everyone to live well. Therefore, we are on a mission to create life-changing ingredients for life-changing products.

We will do this while safekeeping our place — it’s where we are from; we’re close to our product, which keeps us close to our land. So it’s time for us to actively collaborate and engage with like-minded organisations to benefit New Zealand on the world stage.

Our journey is only just beginning. Whether we are looking at our company’s past 20 years or our country’s past 2000 years, we will respect where we have come from while keeping our focus on the future.

Our ambition is to propel the company beyond sustainability and into regeneration: shifting from a business that “does less harm” into a business that “does more good”.

Sustainable business is a worthy goal but sustainability merely supports the status quo by only replacing what is used. The end result of sustainable business is that we maintain the world in its current state of overshoot – with ongoing harm to the environment and ever-increasing social inequity. This is not ok with us. This is why our vision is to go beyond sustainability and towards becoming a regenerative business that pushes against the tide and gives back more than we take.

There is no official definition of what it means to be a regenerative business, and all businesses have different profiles, impacts and opportunities for change. This means that we must define what being regenerative business means for us in a way that is meaningful to us, to our local environment and to our local community.

For Keraplast, being a regenerative business means that we do what’s right, not what’s easy. It means redesigning the key Environmental, Social and Governance elements (ESG) of our business. It means:

• We will create products that are beneficial to the environment at all levels, from how we source our raw materials, to how we manufacture our products, through to our products’ end of life.

• We will share the benefits of our business with everyone who contributes to our success, providing generous working conditions and benefits to staff, and generous payments to our growers.

• We will enhance our local community, creating enduring networks, connections and employment.