What is bacterial cellulose?

What is cellulose?

Updated 10 October 2026.

Cellulose is what plants use to make themselves rigid. Every plant cell has a wall, and that wall is mostly cellulose. It is the most common natural building material on earth. Wood, cotton, flax, hemp and bamboo are largely made of it. Part of the fibre in fruit and vegetables is cellulose too.

What does cellulose mean? The word comes from cell, cellula in Latin. The ending -ose is the one you often see in the names of sugars. Chemically, cellulose is a very long chain of glucose, a simple sugar. These chains lie side by side and together form strong fibres. That is how a tree stays upright.

You come across cellulose everywhere. Paper and cardboard are made of cellulose fibres from wood. Cotton clothing is almost pure cellulose. Tablets often contain it as a filler and food uses it as a thickener. People cannot digest cellulose. In your gut it acts as dietary fibre.

People have used cellulose for a very long time. Think of linen and cotton for clothing, and paper to write on. Today cellulose is also the raw material for viscose, a fabric for clothing, and for some films. Almost always, that cellulose comes from wood or cotton.

Is cellulose a plastic? No. Plastic is a synthetic material, usually made from crude oil. Cellulose is a natural substance that plants and some bacteria make themselves. There are plastics derived from cellulose, such as cellophane and cellulose acetate. To make them, the cellulose is chemically modified. That is something different from cellulose as it occurs in nature.

Cellulose, but made by bacteria

Some bacteria make cellulose too. They spin a dense network of fibres so thin you can only see them under a microscope. That network grows as a sheet on the surface of a liquid.

In plants, cellulose is bound to other substances, such as lignin. That is why turning wood into paper takes a lot of water, energy and chemicals. Bacterial cellulose does not contain those substances. The sheet is almost pure cellulose from the start.

Chemically, bacterial cellulose is the same substance as cellulose from plants. The difference is in its form. Bacterial fibres are much thinner than plant fibres and lie closer together. That makes the material behave differently. It can hold a lot of water, and once dried it becomes a strong, thin sheet.

In short, the main differences between cellulose from plants and cellulose from bacteria.

• Origin. Plant cellulose comes from wood, cotton or other crops. Bacterial cellulose is grown.
• Purity. In plants, cellulose is bound to lignin and other substances. Bacterial cellulose is almost pure.
• Fibres. Bacterial fibres are much thinner and form a dense network.
• Extraction. Cellulose from wood has to be freed chemically. Bacterial cellulose grows straight away as a sheet.

Bacterial cellulose has long been made at scale as nata de coco, a dessert from Southeast Asia. Source (details and source) We do not grow it to eat, but to make rigid disposables from it.

How is bacterial cellulose made?

Bacterial cellulose is not taken from nature but grown. That happens in a few steps. The details differ from maker to maker. This is the general picture.

• Culturing. Bacteria are given a liquid with nutrients. They use those nutrients to make cellulose.
• Growing. A sheet of cellulose fibres grows on the surface of the liquid. It gets thicker for as long as the bacteria have food.
• Harvesting and cleaning. The sheet is lifted out of the liquid and washed. What remains is almost pure cellulose.
• Shaping and drying. The sheet is dried and shaped into a product. How we form it into a cup is our own innovation.

Our bacteria grow on side streams from the food industry, not on food itself. Our own data (details and source) We work with a wild-type bacterium that has not been genetically modified. We do not disclose which one. Our own data (details and source)

The sheet grows best on a liquid that stays still. That makes scaling up difficult. Want to know how we tackle that? Read how our technology works.