It was fantastic to see Colorifix receiving a visit from The Earthshot Prize founder Prince William and council member Cate Blanchett today!
Roz Bird, CEO at Norwich Research Park said “I was delighted to welcome His Royal Highness Prince William and Cate Blanchett to Norwich Research Park today. It was a fantastic opportunity to show how proud we all are of the founders of Colorifix, Orr Yarkoni and Jim Ajioka, and the whole Colorifix team and how right it is that they should have been recognised by The Earthshot Prize. It gave me the chance to explain that, as one of the largest research clusters in Europe, with 30,000 people on site every day, Norwich Research Park has a unique opportunity to attract investment, create jobs, inspire young people and help discover solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems in agri-biotech, food biotech and industrial biotech. It’s been a great day for the campus and a wonderful opportunity to raise its profile.”
Colorifix was a finalist for the Build a Waste Free World category at the Earthshot awards in 2023. Since it was founded in 2016, Colorifix has partnered with major fashion brands including H&M and Pangaia.
**Colorifix is an industrial biotech company that spun out of Cambridge University and has been based at Norwich Research Park since 2016. It creates sustainable dye for the fashion and textile industries found in nature from organisms like plants, insects, animals or microbes. Instead of physically extracting the pigment, it looks at the DNA of that organism and identifies the codes for the genes that produce the pigment. It then builds that DNA code and inserts it into microbes, such as yeast or a bacteria, which are fed sugar and nitrogen in a fermenter with water, in the same way you would brew beer, that converts them into pigment or dye. Their DNA-based biological dyeing method cuts water use and removes the need for toxic chemicals. An innovative solution proves that fashion can be colourful without harming the planet.
