Micro­Har­vest launches pilot plant, accel­er­at­ing path to com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion of their single-cell pro­tein ingredients.

Micro­Har­vest, a lead­ing indus­tri­al bio­tech­no­logy com­pany ded­ic­ated to advan­cing sus­tain­able pro­tein pro­duc­tion, has just launched its cut­ting-edge pilot plant in Lis­bon – enabling the com­pany to pro­duce single-cell pro­tein samples. 

The offi­cial launch of the pilot, marked by an event held on Novem­ber 16^th in Lis­bon, atten­ded by investors Food­Labs and Faber to name but a few, marks a sig­ni­fic­ant mile­stone in MicroHarvest’s mis­sion to reshape the land­scape of sus­tain­able food production.

With the abil­ity to oper­ate bey­ond lab­scale in-house, the pilot plant will accel­er­ate MicroHarvest’s jour­ney towards com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion and mar­ket avail­ab­il­ity. The plant will pro­duce pro­tein samples for cus­tom­ers, allow­ing the com­pany to fur­ther hone its tech­no­logy and test pro­duc­tion runs before bring­ing them to com­mer­cial scale.

The pilot plant is loc­ated at their Fact­ory Lis­bon site. In a remark­able span of six months, Micro­Har­vest trans­formed a por­tion of their office space into a fully equipped labor­at­ory and pilot plant. Luísa Cruz, CTO of Micro­Har­vest, notes, ​“This pilot plant serves as tan­gible evid­ence of the scalab­il­ity of our pro­cess. With a lower invest­ment when com­pared to altern­at­ive tech­no­lo­gies, and with­in a mere 200 square meters, we can achieve a daily pro­duc­tion of 25 kg.” Sim­ul­tan­eously, after suc­cess­fully trans­fer­ring the tech­no­logy and scal­ing up pro­duc­tion to reach daily out­puts in tons, the team engaged a com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion partner. 

COO Jonath­an Roberz emphas­izes, ​“The speed at which we accom­plished this demon­strates that we pos­sess the right team and the right tech­no­logy to make sus­tain­able pro­tein read­ily avail­able at scale. This is of cru­cial import­ance as our food sys­tems’ eco­lo­gic­al foot­print must be min­im­ized to remain with­in our plan­et­ary boundaries.”

Katelijne Bekers, CEO of Micro­Har­vest, com­ments, ​“With­in just six months of open­ing our Lis­bon office, our team has doubled in size, and we’ve achieved an impress­ive feat by con­struct­ing the pilot plant in record time – a truly remark­able jour­ney. With­in the next three months, we are on track to intro­duce our first product to the mar­ket. These mile­stones under­score our com­mit­ment to driv­ing real impact by bring­ing com­mer­cially com­pet­it­ive, con­sist­ent, and sus­tain­able ingredi­ents to mar­ket fast.”

MicroHarvest’s pro­pri­et­ary tech­no­logy enables the sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion of high-qual­ity pro­tein ingredi­ents con­tain­ing over 60% raw pro­tein with­in just 24 hours. The pion­eer­ing approach sig­ni­fic­antly reduces resource con­sump­tion com­pared to con­ven­tion­al meth­ods and has the poten­tial to reshape the industry. It offers highly com­pet­it­ive, scal­able and con­sist­ent pro­tein solu­tions applic­able across diverse sec­tors, includ­ing feed, pet food, and human food.

MicroHarvest’s pilot plant launch is a trans­form­at­ive moment in the jour­ney towards address­ing the glob­al chal­lenge of feed­ing a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion while min­im­iz­ing envir­on­ment­al impact. The company’s pro­pri­et­ary bio­mass fer­ment­a­tion tech­no­logy is at the fore­front of this launch, show­cas­ing a revolu­tion­ary approach to sus­tain­able pro­tein production.

The company’s innov­at­ive bio­mass fer­ment­a­tion tech­no­logy has already garnered sig­ni­fic­ant atten­tion after being honored with the pres­ti­gi­ous Bloomberg NEF Pion­eers Award earli­er this year. As the sole European com­pany to receive this recog­ni­tion, Micro­Har­vest has estab­lished itself as an industry lead­er with a vis­ion for a more sus­tain­able future and the launch of the pilot plant is a pivotal step towards the com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion of this innov­at­ive technology.