A shared facility built to help fermentation start-ups cross from laboratory to factory has opened in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Biotech Open Platform, set up two years ago by the dairy group Danone, the tyre maker Michelin and four partners, opened the 5,000 square metre site at the Sustainable Materials Center in Michelin's Cataroux innovation park, Green Queen reports.
The founders, Danone, Michelin, the bank Credit Agricole, the technology transfer firm Clermont Auvergne Innovation, the biotech company Greentech and the US biomanufacturer DMC Biotechnologies, put in more than EUR 20 million for this phase. The EU's European Regional Development Fund, through the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region, and Clermont Auvergne Metropole also supported it.
Advanced fermentation, of which precision fermentation is the best known kind, uses microbes as small factories to make proteins, enzymes, food ingredients, cosmetic ingredients and bio-based materials from renewable resources. The new site has a 15-cubic-metre fermentation line with semi-industrial purification, and aims to take companies from 10 grams of an ingredient to one tonne, enough for application tests before commercial production.
The platform's chief executive, Khadidja Romari, said moving a promising process from lab scale to a robust industrial one needs experience and technical know-how as well as equipment, and that confidentiality and intellectual property protection are essential for the companies it works with. Michelin chairman Florent Menegaux said the group sees a chance to replace some petrochemical molecules with bio-based alternatives.
Danone brings one of the world's largest collections of ferments, with 4,000 strains identified, and has invested in the precision fermentation dairy protein start-ups Imagindairy of Israel and Standing Ovation of France. Chief executive Antoine de Saint-Affrique said the platform strengthens a critical link in Europe's biotechnology ecosystem.
The opening fits a gap the European Commission has itself identified: its new strategy for food research and innovation notes that the EU lacks industrial fermentation capacity, and that start-ups making sustainable foods struggle to raise the money to move from pilot to commercial scale.
The report was written by Anay Mridul for Green Queen.
Photo: Romary / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)
Source: Green Queen
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