Watch: Making Mattresses Great Again – How A Maltese Startup Is Reshaping An Industry
A Maltese start-up is making waves in the world of advanced materials. Smart Materials, a finalist at AdMaCom Scale—one of the world’s most prestigious competitions for deep-tech start-ups—has developed a revolutionary auxetic foam that it is now showcasing in Berlin. Their innovation is a game-changer for industries ranging from medical devices to aerospace, but they are starting with an industry close to home: mattresses.
At the heart of their breakthrough is a special type of foam known as auxetic foam.
Unlike conventional foams, which become thinner when stretched, auxetic foams expand perpendicularly under tension. This makes them highly impact-resistant, better at distributing pressure, and more durable than traditional materials. It also makes auxetic foam the perfect material for the next generation of mattresses—soft to the initial touch, providing support, adapting to different body types, and achieving all of this in a single layer. This makes manufacturing easier and removes current barriers to recycling. These properties make them ideal for applications where resilience and adaptability are critical, such as sports padding, medical cushions, and protective gear.
The Innovation: Cracking the Auxetic Code
Despite their impressive properties, auxetic foams have been notoriously difficult to manufacture at scale. Traditionally, they have been produced using a complex, multi-step post-processing technique that involves mechanically compressing and heating standard polyurethane foam. This method is inefficient, expensive, and unsuitable for mass production.
Smart Materials has developed a patented process that eliminates these hurdles by embedding auxetic properties into the foam at the manufacturing stage. Instead of modifying an existing material, their approach tailors the chemistry of the foam itself, ensuring auxetic behaviour is built-in from the start. This method dramatically reduces production costs and opens the door to large-scale commercial applications for the first time.
The technology was developed by Smart Materials while building on research carried out at the University of Malta.
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Reinventing Mattresses
While the potential applications for auxetic foam range from aerospace to medical devices, Smart Materials has chosen to introduce its technology through the mattress industry. The global mattress sector, valued at over $40 billion, faces significant sustainability and performance challenges. Traditional polyurethane foams retain heat, degrade quickly, and are difficult to recycle due to their multi-layer construction. As a result, millions of discarded mattresses end up in landfills each year.
Smart Materials’ proprietary auxetic foam, branded as Zetic, addresses these problems. Unlike traditional foams, Zetic eliminates the need for multi-layer construction, making mattresses easier to recycle while also providing superior comfort, pressure distribution, and breathability. Their first product, a mattress brand called Huggah, is set to launch in Malta this year, serving as a test bed before global expansion.
The Road Ahead
Smart Materials has already secured patents in the Netherlands, Canada, China, and Japan, with applications pending in the U.S. and EU. They are nearing full subscription of their €2.2M financing round, with 85% secured and committed, leaving just €300,000 available.
The company has received significant industry recognition, including awards from the Malta Intellectual Property Awards and the Hello Tomorrow Deep Tech Pioneer programme. With its patented technology and growing international recognition, Smart Materials is positioning itself as a leader in advanced materials innovation.
As auxetic foams gain traction across industries, Smart Materials aims to be at the forefront of this emerging market.
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