This document prices a single bet: to make industrial a gesture that never has been. Every assumption is explicit, and those that are not measured are flagged as such.
It takes roughly eight hundred reelings to obtain one gram of silk. This is not an estimate: Simon Peers measured it on his own project — six hundred to eleven hundred spiders per gram — the Oliver Hoare catalogue corroborates it at twenty-three thousand spiders per ounce, and our own internal calculation gives seven hundred and thirty-five.
We have timed both gestures: one minute to feed an individual, ten minutes to reel it. Multiplied by eight hundred, that is a hundred and forty-seven hours of human work per gram. No spider farm has ever survived that arithmetic.
That is the only reason this market is empty. It is not a biology problem — rearing, we know how to do. It is a problem of minutes.
| Stage | min / reeling | h / gram | Direct cost | Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Today, entirely by hand | 11,00 | 147 | 2 567 €/g | ×1 |
| 24-post reeling frame | 1,42 | 19 | 331 €/g | ×8 |
| + automated feeding | 0,57 | 8 | 132 €/g | ×19 |
| 48-post frame + handling | 0,26 | 3 | 60 €/g | ×42 |
The reeling prototype exists and draws a continuous thread without breaking it. What remains is to parallelise it, then automate feeding — a problem insect farming has solved at industrial scale for a decade. Direct cost includes loaded technician labour at €17.50/h, live prey and the rearing share of the premises.
The silk is never sold raw. A gram sold by the gram brings three hundred euros; the same gram transformed into jewellery is worth twelve thousand five hundred. All production therefore goes into pieces — jewellery, haute couture embroidery, artworks — and the table below can never consume more than it produces.
| 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | 2031 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reeling posts | 1 | 12 | 24 | 24 | 48 |
| Technicians (FTE) | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Produced (g) | 0 | 40 | 80 | 110 | 140 |
| Transformed (g) | 0,0 | 28,4 | 64,0 | 98,0 | 128,0 |
| Year-end reserve (g) | 22 | 34 | 50 | 62 | 74 |
| Direct cost (€/g) | 2 567 | 1 127 | 771 | 468 | 359 |
| Jewellery | 0 | 8 | 25 | 40 | 50 |
| Artworks | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
The reserve is not dormant stock: it is the buffer that lets us honour a commissioned work without interrupting jewellery. A house built on a rare material is judged on its reserve too.
| 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | 2031 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 0 € | 155 000 € | 400 000 € | 625 000 € | 870 000 € |
| Cost of sales | 0 € | 50 000 € | 122 500 € | 190 000 € | 245 000 € |
| Gross margin | 0 € | 105 000 € | 277 500 € | 435 000 € | 625 000 € |
| Payroll | 139 400 € | 139 400 € | 139 400 € | 167 400 € | 167 400 € |
| Operating costs | 64 600 € | 79 500 € | 109 000 € | 126 000 € | 138 000 € |
| EBITDA | -204 000 € | -113 900 € | 29 100 € | 141 600 € | 319 600 € |
| Capital expenditure | 95 000 € | 65 000 € | 20 000 € | 35 000 € | 30 000 € |
| Year-end cash | 201 000 € | 22 100 € | 31 200 € | 137 800 € | 427 400 € |
first year at operating break-even
gross margin once production is running
cash low point, reached at end-2028
of cumulative revenue over five years
The cash low point is the real subject of this raise. At five hundred thousand euros, the safety margin at end-2028 is twenty-two thousand euros — about three weeks of operation. The plan holds, but with no room for slippage. A six hundred thousand euro raise would take that cushion to four months and absorb a six-month delay on the colony, which is the likeliest risk.
Broken down by nature rather than by theme, payroll first: it is the dominant line. The two directors each draw two thousand euros net a month — eighty-three thousand four hundred euros of annual employer cost for both; the rest of the payroll is technical.
The colony was dispersed and the premises given up in April 2026. The first six months are a restart, not a start: this is built into the timetable and the cash plan.
| Milestone | Deliverable | Success criterion |
|---|---|---|
| M+1 | Metrology | 0.1 mg analytical balance; the entire historical stock weighed |
| M+3 | Colony repurchased, premises equipped | Five hundred individuals in individual rearing |
| M+6 | Yield measured | Milligrams per spider per reeling, over a hundred individuals |
| M+12 | Twelve-post frame in service | Under two minutes of labour per reeling |
| M+18 | F1 → F2 cycle closed | A captive-born generation reaching maturity |
| M+24 | Twenty-four-post frame, first pieces | Forty grams produced, eight jewels and one work delivered |
The M+6 milestone matters most: until the mass yield per spider is measured, no capacity projection has any value. It gates everything else, and it costs less than two thousand euros.
The plan presented in the raise takes the top of the defensible ranges. The downside case takes the bottom of the same ranges. Both rest on identical physical production — only prices and pace change.
| À l'horizon 2031 | Downside | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Average price of a jewellery piece | 10 000 € | 25 000 € |
| Pieces per year | 50 | 90 |
| Average price of a work | 80 000 € | 180 000 € |
| Works per year | 4 | 6 |
| Grams produced | 140 | 300 |
| Labour ceiling at 5 FTE | 424 | 424 |
| Revenue | 870 000 € | 3 330 000 € |
| EBITDA | 319 600 € | 2 381 600 € |
| Return on €500K for 25%, exit at 4.2× revenue | 1.8× | 7.0× |
The three gaps between the columns are each backed by a comparable: Hemmerle averages twenty-five thousand nine hundred dollars on the secondary market; Carpenters Workshop has a thirty-eight thousand euro entry ticket; and three hundred grams stays below the labour ceiling computed above. The downside case is EBITDA-positive from 2029.