In an industry increasingly focused on low embodied carbon, stringent regulations and a move towards circularity, Autex Acoustics is redefining the notion of product design with an innovative suite of carbon-neutral, locally made and designed-for-disassembly acoustic systems, products and accessories. But for the company, product design is about much more than just products – it’s about making products that have a second, third and fourth life. Here, we chat to Autex’s Product Development Lead, Sam Wells, about a philosophy that’s shifting the needle on sustainability – designing systems, not just materials.

As Product Development Lead at Autex Acoustics, you’re at the helm of translating ideas into tangible sustainable solutions, including SpinFix and, most recently, Vicinity workstation clamps. What fuels your passion for sustainable innovation and inspires your product design direction at Autex?

At Autex, sustainability is core to what we do. And it’s actually quite different from anywhere else I’ve worked – here, it’s a top benchmark held at the utmost priority right from a project’s inception. It doesn’t become a commercial trade-off that you sacrifice as part of the process. It’s something Jono Mountfort, my manager and our creative leader, and I clicked on right away when we first met – our shared mission to genuinely shift the needle, not scratch the surface.

And what it comes down to is meaningful sustainability. The word sustainability often borders on greenwashing – it tends to be a term people use to feel good. But our goal is to deliver genuinely sustainable outcomes, which means setting robust goals that are bigger than ourselves. And even though we know we won’t necessarily change the world on our own, we want to drive meaningful change by starting initiatives here, in New Zealand, and then scaling them out. Now, this directly ties in with our “show, don’t tell” mindset. Our strength is transforming the abstract into the tangible, so instead of just talking about lofty goals, we take an idea and focus on demonstrating how it can actually work. We prove a system and then build it out into a scalable business model that directly supports our sustainable product design efforts.

Let’s delve deeper into those. Tell us about material circularity which has become one of Autex’s central focal points.

A core tenet we instil in our team is the idea that there is no such thing as a sustainable material – there are only sustainable systems. Whether it’s a biological or technical material, for us it’s essential to respect it as part of the broader system it exists within to ensure it can be stewarded and used again at the end of its lifetime.

Our products today are made with 100% PET and we’re determined to really respect the materials, keep them as homogenous as possible – and ensure the system is equipped to reintegrate them back in. We’ve just shifted from 60% recycled PET content to 80% and this commitment allows us to genuinely move towards a circular model. And that’s actually the fun part of what we do: it’s not just making the products but making the products that make the products – and designing the machinery and the systems that then take that material back in and use it again, turning it into something else.

This inherent respect for the materials underpins Autex’s product development strategy called “Plastics Done Right,” which encapsulates your ability to genuinely harness the sustainable potential in plastics. Given the innovation involved, why did this strategy take so long to bring to fruition?

Things like this take time because you can’t just buy the solution off the shelf – you have to invent it yourself. For instance, the pelletising machinery for our RePET process, where we transform our offcuts and manufacturing waste into rigid PET pellets and use them for injection moulding, didn’t exist. Autex had to develop it from scratch, which involved a robust process of prototyping and manufacturing, and I’m privileged to stand on the shoulders of the team who laid all that foundational work.

Can you tell us more about the RePET process itself?

It starts with fibre, 80% of which is diverted waste from PET bottles. This comes to us as fluff in bales, which we turn into panel or roll products without adding anything else. We then capture waste from two streams – post-production offcuts in our manufacturing facilities and end-of-life products through our take-back schemes. This is why single-material systems, like SpinFix, are so important – they allow for easy disassembly without contaminating the material, which allows for it to be reintegrated back into the production process.

We then take the postproduction offcuts and returned products, chippering and condensing them into small rigid PET pellets through an in-house process that uses less energy than typical re-polymerisation. These pellets are then sent to our partners for injection moulding to become either our own accessories that enhance the circular system, or external products that get an extended life somewhere else.

This process genuinely challenges the common misconception that “natural” is inherently more sustainable. What’s the key thing architects and designers should understand to help reframe this conversation?

I think it’s important to understand that, more often than not, when something is marketed as “natural” it often contains some sort of a blend of synthetics to enhance its performance. Because here’s the thing: synthetic materials do their job very well – they are both consistent and scalable. The problem is, though, that when you blend natural and synthetic fibres, it makes it impossible to process either material at the end of their lives. Which is precisely why this fundamental commitment to sustainable systems and material homogeneity is so essential to foster circularity.

Could you give us an example of a product that successfully embodies all these principles – material circularity, design for disassembly and the idea of sustainable systems over sustainable products?

Absolutely. In the case of our recently released Vicinity clamps, design for disassembly was the central part of the project from the start. We didn’t embed any hardware into the mould and all the hardware is standard and off-the-shelf, which means the individual parts can be easily separated at end of life, allowing the plastic to be reintroduced into the recycling stream. It’s quite incredible how much of an impact something as small as a desk clamp can actually have in this space.

And that same principle applies to SpinFix, which is another key part of your disassembly-focused system?

It’s the perfect example. SpinFix is made from 100% homogenous recycled material, and our team developed an extraordinary friction-welding technology to bind it to the panels without any extra adhesive or fixings, which ensures the material doesn’t get contaminated.

This clip system is a platform for future development – we’re now looking at ceilings and how our panels can cut, fold and join together, exploding a whole new area of exciting sustainable development. That combination of SpinFix and RePET has created a new avenue of product development our team loves sinking their teeth into – new forms, new ways things go together, but always with disassembly at the forefront. It’s very much about tightening up that circle and informing the whole model.

Are there any other new challenges or opportunities you’re particularly excited about?

We are constantly looking at what’s around the corner and we’re doing quite a lot of research into alternative and future fibres, which is really exciting. Ultimately, interiors have the quickest turnover of materials and embodied carbon in buildings, so our focus continues to be on how we can make that material use responsible and circular, and also how we can make enduring products that outlast trends. This broadens our focus from acoustics to the wider idea of wellness, and that focus on how you make spaces healthy and care for the people who occupy them is often the common language we share with designers and specifiers. As the idea of wellness becomes increasingly more central to sustainable design, our products continue to become far less of a superficial addition and more of an integral component of making a space work for its intended purpose.

The shift towards wellness in design is often linked to broader changes in how sustainability and acoustics are perceived. Are you seeing this play out, especially with the growing importance of embodied carbon and stricter regulations?

Definitely, especially in the European markets, where policy increasingly dictates how architects and designers specify materials. There is a growing trend of industry professionals prioritising sustainability in line with these developing policies, and we’re seeing our products thoughtfully integrated into projects designed with strong environmental credentials in mind from the very start. Naturally, this shift towards more stringent requirements will only continue and, from our perspective, building on the successful sustainable product development foundations, we want to keep innovating and looking for what’s next to ensure we can help architects, designers and specifiers meet and exceed sustainability credentials – and create better spaces that benefit the people who occupy them.

Finally, what’s the one last thought about sustainable design you’d like to leave our readers with?

Be hungry and be bold. Be ready to really sink your teeth into it, rather than just washing a lick of paint on it, so to speak. We’re always so keen to push the envelope – and we’re always ready to work with people who are determined to do the same.

Show, don’t tell: Q&A with Sam Wells, Product Development Lead at Autex Acoustics

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