At an office in a knowledge-industrial center in Juan-dong, Michuhol District, Incheon. Upon opening the office door on 2 July, various drilling tools and chunks of shattered quartz glass were scattered across the worktable. This is where experiments and commercialization take place to transform quartz glass, used and discarded in semiconductor processes, into next-generation lead-free crystal. Meet Freude is a startup that gives new life to waste high-purity (99.9999%) quartz glass as high-end optical materials for fashion accessories, jewelry, and optical lenses. “Through roughly two years of research and development, we created a new material called Gentium, and after its value was recognized by global fashion brands, we incorporated the company this March,” said CEO Kim (43), whom this newspaper met at the office that day.

● Opportunity created by the era of ethical consumption

From next year, Europe will make digital product passports (DPP) mandatory in the fashion and jewelry sectors. Information such as country of origin, whether harmful substances like lead are contained, carbon emissions, and the proportion of recycled or circular materials must be displayed in QR code form. Existing crystal products, made from virgin rather than circular resources and containing lead, are expected to see their space in the market significantly reduced. Meet Freude’s strategy is to replace those products with Gentium. The company also expects Gentium to become an alternative material in the lab-grown diamond market. “If lab-grown diamonds continue to be produced in India and China relying on fossil fuel-based power grids, substantial carbon emissions could lead to a heavier carbon tax burden,” Kim said. “If the expansion of Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism overlaps with mandatory DPPs, Gentium is expected to be given a strong opportunity,” she added.

Swarovski, which dominates the crystal market, abruptly halted its KRW 700 billion-per-year business-to-business (B2B) material supply two years ago as part of a brand positioning strategy. Before the suspension, it supplied crystals to some 5,000 fashion and jewelry companies including Prada, Armani, and Gucci, and these clients made shoes, handbags, and other items adorned with crystals. “The vacuum left by this premium crystal brand remains unfilled,” Kim said. “We were the first to penetrate this market with Gentium, and before long we expect to be able to supply to global fashion houses,” she said.

● Two layers of technology applied to quartz glass

Quartz glass is used in almost every semiconductor manufacturing process—such as oxidation, etching, and deposition—where wafers are exposed to high temperatures and corrosive gases. It is an irreplaceable consumable that withstands corrosive chemicals and maintains dimensional stability even at temperatures above 1,500 degrees Celsius, thereby preserving the precision required for advanced nodes. Once fine cracks or surface damage occur, it is discarded as is. Most of it is currently landfilled or incinerated. A small portion is ground into powder and recycled merely as glittering additives for asphalt paving materials. Some large corporations reprocess it and reuse it for its original purpose, but the volumes are extremely small. As semiconductor processes move to ever finer geometries, defect tolerances tighten, effectively increasing the raw material feedstock for Meet Freude.

Meet Freude’s technology consists broadly of two stages. The first is a remelting and forming technology that melts quartz glass and reshapes it. “These materials are manufactured by different companies and come from different processes, so their purity and impurity profiles vary widely. Their melting points differ, and their compositional ratios must be recalibrated. Unlike conventional crystal, the challenge is to achieve sparkle without using lead,” said Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Lim Young-seok. The company has eliminated harmful heavy metals through its proprietary composition formula. Using know-how in adding trace elements, it has suppressed bubbles and cracking, which readily occur during melting, and enhanced process stability in the remelting and forming stage by precisely controlling temperature and viscosity. The core technology lies in identifying the optimal composition ratio that secures both strength and transparency.

The second is plasma coating technology. The base plates that have gone through remelting and forming differ little from ordinary crystal, but once ion-bonding plasma deposition and optical design are applied, the surface properties change. Through plasma optical coating, the company has improved surface light reflection characteristics and light extraction efficiency, achieving stronger brilliance and sparkle than conventional crystal. “We have also secured technology that delivers more than 10 times the durability and longevity of existing coatings,” Lim said.

In ray-tracing optical simulation measurements, Gentium scored 94 for brilliance (brightness of light), 98 for fire (light dispersion), and 97 for sparkle (intensity of scintillation). “These results are close to those of top-cut lab-grown diamonds, which scored 95, 100, and 100 under identical evaluation conditions,” Kim said.

Unlike many crystal manufacturers such as Swarovski, which add lead to raise refractive index, Gentium achieves this through lead-free composition design and remelting and forming processes. “Several crystal companies, including Swarovski, do produce lead-free crystal, but none manufacture it from circular resources as we do. We can also secure unit-cost competitiveness, which enhances its value as a commercial product,” Kim said. The company plans to segment Gentium into a jewelry-focused track emphasizing aesthetics and another track for fashion accessories and plaques, and further advance its process technologies accordingly.

● Incorporation after securing confirmation of global demand

Meet Freude was co-founded by two people: CEO Kim and Executive Director Song Si-won (37). Both have humanities and social sciences rather than STEM backgrounds. Kim has experience in NGOs and entrepreneur support, while Song, Chief Product Officer (CPO), created and ran a jewelry brand for 15 years. The two met three years ago at an entrepreneurs’ gathering and agreed to “create jewelry using circular resources.” As they could not find any domestic company willing to melt quartz glass, Song emailed more than 100 Chinese firms before finally securing a partner. Lim drew on 14 years of experience at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, where he accumulated know-how in melting processes and plasma coating, along with his track record as a gold medalist in casting at the National Skills Competition, to raise process completeness.

Notably, all technology development prior to incorporation was funded with the founders’ personal capital. “In my work supporting entrepreneurs, I saw far too many good ideas disappear in the commercialization phase because they failed to find real demand,” Kim said. “So we set a principle not to establish a corporation until we had secured actual demand sources, and started the business on that basis.”

Even before incorporation, Meet Freude launched an aggressive sales push by directly emailing the headquarters of European luxury brands. Early this year, a major European fashion house known for its ethical luxury positioning responded to Gentium samples, calling them “an astonishing brilliance and overwhelming quality that meet our design standards.” Meet Freude decided to incorporate only after moving beyond a letter of intent and hearing that the fashion house’s design team is planning product development using Gentium next year. Meetings with other large global luxury houses are also scheduled within the year.

The company is not without challenges. Because waste quartz glass has not yet been recognized as a circular resource, it cannot currently purchase the raw material in large volumes directly. The company plans first to apply for regulatory sandbox approval to overcome this, and then to push for waste quartz glass to be recognized as a circular resource within the earliest possible timeframe. It may also take time for Gentium to gain acceptance as a new material in the conservative jewelry market.

Despite these difficulties, Meet Freude is determined to enter the global market with fashion accessories this year and next, and then, by further advancing its technology by 2028, expand into the jewelry market, thereby opening a new crystal market based on circular resources. “Just as Corning in the United States expanded its industrial footprint from watches to automobiles, healthcare, and energy with glass alone, Meet Freude will start with fashion and then extend Gentium into jewelry, watch glass, optical lenses, and display applications,” Kim said.

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