Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant suc­cess­fully com­mis­sions a 75,000 L fer­menter, demon­strat­ing Vivici’s Viv­itein™ BLG tech­no­logy in indus­tri­al-scale pre­ci­sion fermentation

Fol­low­ing a stra­tegic decision taken three years ago, the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant (BBEPP) star­ted, in Septem­ber 2023, the con­struc­tion of a 75,000 L demon­stra­tion fer­menter. Hardly four­teen months later, this new asset, a true in-house engin­eer­ing mas­ter­piece, is ​“ready for busi­ness” and will allow innov­at­ors to test and val­id­ate their fer­ment­a­tion pro­cesses under rel­ev­ant indus­tri­al con­di­tions while at the same time pro­du­cing mar­ket-ready and food-grade mater­i­al at cost-com­pet­it­ive pricing.

Hendrik Wae­ge­man, Head of Busi­ness Oper­a­tions, believes this will be a game changer for BBEPP: ​‘While help­ing com­pan­ies to bridge the Val­ley of Death in innov­a­tion, by offer­ing them scale-up sup­port up to 15,000 L scale, we often observed they got stuck a second time, i.e. when going to indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing scale. There are not only the phys­ic­al effects of scale, there is also often the require­ment to invest sig­ni­fic­antly in the down­stream unit oper­a­tions at lar­ger scale CMO plants, some­thing we avoid at BBEPP because we have all the down­stream units match­ing the 75,000 L fer­ment­a­tion scale’.

And indeed, a new level of oppor­tun­it­ies unlocks, as BBEPP’s new 75,000 L fer­menter is con­nec­ted to its extens­ive suite of down­stream pro­cessing equipment.

The Dutch com­pany Vivici was the first con­trac­ted user to test the new fer­ment­a­tion line. After suc­cess­ful scale-up of the Viv­iteinTM BLG tech­no­logy in mul­tiple 15,000 L scale runs at BBEPP, the pre­ci­sion fer­ment­a­tion com­pany now takes a giant leap by val­id­at­ing its tech­no­logy at large pro­duc­tion scale.

Stephan van Sint Fiet, CEO of Vivici, test­i­fies: ​“I am extremely proud that we have been able to hit this crit­ic­al mile­stone in our pro­cess scale up and get it ​“Right First Time”. Suc­cess­fully run­ning our pro­duc­tion at large scale will fur­ther strengthen our com­mer­cial rol­lout, giv­ing cus­tom­ers con­fid­ence in Vivici as a reli­able and trus­ted sup­ply part­ner. I’m con­vinced this is the res­ult of the close and con­struct­ive col­lab­or­a­tion between the teams of Vivici and BBEPP in the past months”.

The entire team of the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant is over the moon with this first suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial run and cel­eb­rates this import­ant mile­stone with the launch of a par­ody video, true to its sig­na­ture com­mu­nic­a­tion style, inaug­ur­at­ing ​“Fer­ment­a­tion Park”. Park? Yes indeed! With the 75,000 L fer­menter up and run­ning, BBEPP con­cludes a 34 mil­lion invest­ment pro­gram includ­ing a third 15,000 L line and three addi­tion­al 1500 L fer­menters, trip­ling its over­all fer­ment­a­tion capa­city and is all geared up for mak­ing cus­tom­ers grow under the best pos­sible conditions.

The fully equipped 75 m³ fer­ment­a­tion line was real­ized with the sup­port of Bio Base DEMO, a Nex­t­Gen­er­a­tionEU Recov­ery and Resi­li­ence facil­ity (RRF) pro­ject with con­tract Nr. VV021/02 and the city of Ghent.