Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[GTman1]

I’ll continue to believe they can be a serious competitor … at $30 to $50/kilo.

They will never get to $30 to $50/kg of spider silk fibers.

I wondering how many people here have even read Spibers patents. Like all of them. And understood what they were reading.

Here is there most current patent application that has to do with there fibroin proteins and their yields:

Spiber patent app published 10/29/2020

If you notice, their best performing spider protein yields were 2.7 g/L. That means, in a 1000 liter bioreactor, they would be able to produce 2.7 kilos of spider silk protein.

Now there are a lot of ingredients that do into the culture medium inside that bioreactor to keep the E.coli alive. Among that is 45 kilos of glucose to start, and another 455 kilos to feed it throughout the fermentation process (unless they substitute it with IPTG aqueous solution which is much more expensive than glucose).

You can buy industrial glucose in bulk for about a $1 per kilo. That single raw ingredient would render their process cost prohibitive. And there are a dozen more ingredients being used in their process that are much more expensive than glucose. Not to mention the roughly 28,000 liters of deionized water that is used for the processing of every kilo or protein. You can purchase bulk deionized water for about $0.10 per liter. That alone would put protein production at $1000's per Kilo.

These economic factors are fine if your product is a pharmaceutical drug. Not so much if you're trying to make moon parkas or knitted ties.

Still, Spiber shows every sign of working on brewed proteins and understands the price point they need to meet.

There is a very good reason Spiber shifter there product naming to "brewed protein". I suspect, in an effort to get to a price point of around $100/kilo, they will just completely abandoned trying to purify whatever is inside their bioreactor. They will just create a fiber with all of the dead lysed E.coli cells, remnant nutrients, spider silk proteins, and the other thousands of different proteins that e.coli naturally excrete into the medium. And they will be right, they will all be "brewed proteins". But the sad part is, it will just be a crap product with no real utility. You can make fibers out of almost anything. I remember in college reading about a company that made fibers out of milk protein. No one bought them.

In fact, Spibers website has already pivoted away from comparing the brewed proteins with the strength of spider silk fibers. This is what they now say about their fibers:

Brewed Protein materials can be processed into a variety of forms, with examples ranging from delicate filament fibers with a silky sheen to spun yarns that boast features such as cashmere-like softness or the renowned thermal and moisture-wicking properties of wool.

Don't believe me? here is their page on "Brewed Proteins"

Spibers Brewed Protein Homepage

A long time ago I called it that Bolt Threads would eventually realize spider silk production was cost prohibitive for them. I was right. I'm calling it now (and I have been) that Spiber will come to the same conclusion (if they already haven't).

Kraig Labs spider silkworm platform is the only feasible technology to mass produce spider silk fibers with the properties of natural spider silk