Functional proteins,
brewed not extracted.
High-value proteins and specialty enzymes made by precision fermentation, and the production platform that makes them, licensed to manufacturers.
A $420B industry still sourced by extraction.
Industrial buyers of functional proteins depend on animal extraction or crop processing. Both are set by biology and weather rather than by process control.
Specialty ingredients still depend on extraction, where yield and purity are dictated by the source.
Buyers absorb double-digit annual swings driven by drought, herd size and export policy.
Formulators compensate with wider tolerances, pushing cost into every downstream product.
The highest-value proteins are exactly the ones hardest to obtain at consistent quality and scale.
Animal-free moved from claim to requirement.
Animal-free sourcing is now a procurement requirement across European food, cosmetics and personal care. Buyers need a qualified, documented, non-extractive supply, and very few exist at industrial specification.
Skincare is the value centre of a beauty market heading past $680B by 2030. Cosmetic-grade ingredients clear a shorter approval path than food, which makes them the fastest first route to revenue.
Plant-derived substitutes created a category but did not solve specification. They cannot reproduce the exact protein structures formulators specify. Precision fermentation targets the molecule itself.
Running at steady state rather than in batches is what moves unit cost from premium niche toward commodity-adjacent, and what turns the process into something worth licensing.
One platform, two revenue engines.
We sell the product now and license the process later. The second engine overtakes the first in 2028 and carries the business through break-even.
Functional proteins and specialty enzymes
Sold by the kilogram on multi-year supply agreements to European manufacturers in food processing, cosmetics and technical formulation. Cosmetic actives are the beachhead: smallest volumes, highest price per kilogram, fastest qualification.
The platform, licensed
Strain and process licensing plus fermentation systems, sold to manufacturers who would rather adopt the process than rebuild it. Higher margin, and it scales without us building every plant.
The cost curve is the moat.
Peers can express the same proteins. Almost all of them do it in batch campaigns, which caps throughput per litre and holds capital per kilogram high.
Months at steady state rather than discrete campaigns. Higher throughput per litre installed, far lower capital per kilogram.
Expression strains tuned per target protein, held as trade secret. Yield improves every campaign, and that run history cannot be copied from a patent.
Continuous-production and downstream-purification families filed via PCT. Filings cover the process; the strain library stays secret.
A shorter qualification cycle funds the company while food-enzyme dossiers work through the longer EU route in parallel.
A narrow wedge into a very large market.
TAM: global specialty ingredients across food, cosmetics and technical formulation. SAM: the share addressable by fermentation-derived proteins and enzymes. Wedge: the premium cosmetic actives beachhead. Bars are scaled for legibility, not linearly. Our own 2032 plan is roughly €119M of revenue, a fraction of the wedge alone.
Beachhead segment. Revenue potential €62M.
Follows food-grade certification. Revenue potential €48M.
Volume tier under REACH bands. Revenue potential €41M.
We compete on process, not on molecule.
| Player | Category | Stage | Where they stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ferrolux Bio | Precision fermentation | Series B | Broad enzyme catalogue, weaker purity spec at high volume |
| Protevia | Precision fermentation | Series A | Cosmetics-first, no food-grade certification yet |
| Kaskade Bioworks | Platform / CDMO | Series C | Contract manufacturing at scale, does not own end products |
| Halvard Bio | Plant extraction | Established | Animal-free, but cannot hit the exact specified structures |
| NOVAKERN | Continuous platform | Series A | Continuous process plus a licensable second engine |
Competitor names above are invented for this reference version.
From pilot line to platform business.
€118.6M revenue by 2032, break-even in 2029.
Cost per kilogram is the whole thesis.
Continuous operation is what carries unit cost from pilot economics to the level where large manufacturers switch, and where licensing the process becomes more valuable than selling the output.
500 L continuous line. Viable for premium cosmetic actives, too high for volume food applications.
The point where food-processing and technical grades open up, and where licensees see a clear build-versus-adopt case.
Platform revenue passes product revenue and becomes the dominant engine, at materially higher margin.
Scenario drivers modelled: platform licence value, yield per litre, new customers per year, COGS percentage, and scale-up delay. Base, upside and downside cases recompute the full chain through to cash.
Built by people who have scaled fermentation before.
Twelve years in bioprocess development and commercial scale-up at a large European fermentation group.
PhD in synthetic biology. Built the strain engineering and expression platform, and owns the process IP.
Led downstream processing and quality operations across two industrial fermentation sites.
Ingredient sales into European food-processing and cosmetics accounts.
12 FTE at Round A, 45 by 2032. Every person named here is invented for this reference version.
€5.5M at €22.5M pre-money.
| Holder | Pre | Post |
|---|---|---|
| Founders | 62.0% | 49.8% |
| Existing investors | 18.0% | 14.5% |
| Angels / pre-seed | 12.0% | 9.6% |
| ESOP | 8.0% | 6.4% |
| Series A investors | — | 19.6% |
€28.0M post-money. Round B €15M in 2028 and Round C €30M in 2030 are modelled, both against a business that is already cash-generative from 2029.
€5.5M to reach the cost curve.
The pilot line runs. The cosmetics beachhead qualifies fastest. Round A funds the 2,000 L line, the strain library and the commercial team, and takes us to the first platform licence.