Aerbio, billed as a pioneer in fermentation technology, has begun its pilot line as it steps up its development.
The company – which plans to raise up to €50m in a Series A funding round, with the target close set for Q4 – uses carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen in the same way most fermentation processes use sugar to produce Proton™, a protein-rich ingredient which could ‘revolutionise’ food and animal nutrition, with no need for fertile soil.
The newly formed company comes as part of a buyout of UK-headquartered Deep Branch Biotechnology, with the core management team of Kaspar Kristiansen (CEO), Rob Mansfield (CTO) and Peter Rowe (CXO), and Chairperson Lars Topholm retained to forge a new path for the business.
Rowe said it is clear there is a pressing need for scalable, nutritious and sustainable protein sources for a range of applications, most notably human and animal nutrition. Collaborations include aquafeed producer BioMar.
He said, “We already have promising results in the lab that show we can produce a range of other valuable products, and once we have built out the full scale-up pipeline to bring Proton to market, we’ll then begin to push through new products.”
Mansfield said scaling an aerobic gas fermentation process brings several key challenges that must be overcome, mainly at the intersection of process efficiency and process safety. “At Aerbio we’re building upon strong foundations laid by Deep Branch in overcoming these challenges,” he said.
Birgitte Skadhauge, formerly Vice President of the Carlsberg Research Laboratory, was today appointed to the Board of Directors, joining Alexander Lacik who was appointed last week.
She said, “There is a real need to reduce carbon dioxide and Aerbio’s technology is a unique innovation to fuel fermentation processes using CO2, because the food and biotech industry cannot exclusively rely on sugars as a sole source of carbon and energy.”
