Seaweed Ski Jackets by 2027: Perth's Uluu Signs Norrøna Deal

By Olivia Hart

Waterproof ski jackets made from seaweed could reach store shelves in late 2027, under a new partnership between Perth startup Uluu and Norwegian outdoor clothing brand Norrøna. The deal is Uluu's first publicly announced textile collaboration, and it comes with funding tied to performance milestones spread over several years.

Uluu co-founder and co-CEO Julia Reisser declined to disclose the value of the agreement. The companies will spend 2027 developing and testing textiles and garments, with a small commercial range targeted for late 2027 or early 2028. That timeline leaves roughly two years for a material that has never been proven at scale in technical outerwear.

"There is very strong demand from the textile side," Reisser told SmartCompany. "Brands feel very enthusiastic about having this natural material that has synthetic-like properties."

The appeal for brands is straightforward: polyester and nylon dominate outdoor apparel, and both shed microplastics. The European Environment Agency estimates between 200,000 and 500,000 tonnes of microplastics from synthetic textiles enter the world's oceans each year. That is the equivalent of a supertanker's worth of plastic waste dumped into the sea every few days.

How does seaweed become a fabric?

Founded in 2021, Uluu uses fermentation to turn seaweed into a biodegradable material that can replace petroleum-based plastics in buttons, packaging and textiles. The process works in stages:

• Uluu sources seaweed from Indonesia, working with farmers and WWF on traceability and certification.
• The seaweed ships to Western Australia, where its sugars are extracted.
• Bacteria ferment those sugars into PHAs — polyhydroxyalkanoates, a biodegradable polymer.
• The material is pelletised so it can be melted and spun into fibres for textiles.

Uluu claims the resulting fibres have similar properties to polyester and nylon, do not shed persistent microplastics, and can be recycled or composted under the right conditions. Those last three words carry weight: composting standards vary, and the company has not yet published independent durability data for a garment application.

The startup has already supplied materials for commercial products, including buttons for Australian sleepwear brand Papinille. Buttons are a low-stakes use case. Waterproof, windproof outerwear is a far more technically demanding application, and Reisser framed the Norrøna deal as exactly that step up.

Both companies are "passionate about marine conservation and enjoying the outdoors," Reisser said. "We felt very connected when we went to Norway and met the CEO and the team there."

Norrøna CEO Jorgen Jorgensen said the partnership could transform materials across outdoor and recreational clothing, and beyond.

"If we can make it happen, it's going to be the biggest game changer within materials in the world," Jorgensen said.

Note the conditional. Even the CEO most invested in the deal hedges on whether it will work.

Why an oceanographer started a plastics company?

Before Uluu, Reisser worked as an oceanographer. Her PhD involved mapping microplastics in Australian waters.

"It was great to study the problem, but I was getting depressed of just telling all the bad news about what microplastic means to the ocean, to the ocean health, and also our own health," Reisser told SmartCompany. The experience pushed her into entrepreneurship, seeking a solution rather than a diagnosis.

Can seaweed compete with plastic on price?

The honest answer: not yet. Reisser admitted Uluu's materials carry a price premium. On a garment-to-garment basis, however, she argued the difference shrinks to almost nothing.

"When you translate that premium to a garment, you're talking a few cents more," Reisser said.

Uluu's path to cost parity with fossil fuel-based plastics runs through bigger factories and its saltwater fermentation technology. The company plans its first fully fledged commercial manufacturing plant in Australia, followed by additional plants overseas, including Indonesia. No site, capacity figures or construction dates have been announced.

Reisser believes seaweed can ultimately replace fossil fuel-based plastics across a broad range of industries, with a caveat of her own.

"Of course, it is not going to be tomorrow, but there is a very tangible way to do that," she said.

What about the money?

Uluu is in the planning stages for a Series B raise to further develop its fermentation operations. The company's funding history to date:

• $8.6 million seed round in 2022.
• $16 million Series A in 2025, led by German investor Burda Principal Investments.
• $2.1 million in Australian federal government funding earlier this year to help scale production.

That totals roughly $26.7 million across equity rounds, plus the government grant and the undisclosed Norrøna funding. It is modest capital for a company planning commercial-scale fermentation plants to challenge the petrochemical industry, which produces plastics at hundreds of millions of tonnes per year.

The test ahead is twofold: Uluu must prove its seaweed polymer survives the technical demands of waterproof outerwear by 2027, and it must raise enough capital to build the factory capacity that gets its costs down to plastic. The first jackets will answer the durability question; the Series B will answer the scale one.