We’re very proud to make the cover of Berlingske Business, sharing that precision fermentation can be the key to secure food and climate resilience.
In the article, our co-founder and CEO Thomas Schmidt explains that it is time to add another production technology to produce foods and materials for the world. A clean, green, resilient, efficient, consistent, and fast-paced solution is ready to take over: precision fermentation.
Denmark and Europe should leverage their world-leading position in precision fermentation and establish large scale manufacturing capacity in Denmark to produce nutritious proteins. Cow’s milk proteins provide an unmatched balance of complete nutrition, functional benefits, and versatility. With 21st.BIO‘s production technology food manufacturers across the globe, are now able to produce these proteins – using precision fermentation technology instead of cows.
Precision fermentation technology is a Danish pride, fueling the global successes of Novo Nordisk and Novonesis. Building on this legacy, 21st.BIO is now developing the technology for new areas of application: nutritious foods, agriculture, biomaterials, and even biomining.
For this, huge production volumes are required. That’s why we need mega production facilities to be built – ideally, in Europe, where we have the leading technology.
“Denmark has a unique ecosystem for large-scale biomanufacturing. We have the technology, the knowledge, and the skilled people who know how to put it together. Protein manufacturing could easily be our next wind turbine adventure. But there are plenty of headwinds in Denmark, and that’s unfortunate,” Thomas told Berlingske.
Our customers are already upscaling their production of the amazing whey protein, beta-lactoglobulin (BLG). Our production technology, BLG Essential+™, has already been approved in the USA. But it will take many years until you can find it in European products… While many biosolutions leaders are based in Europe, the EU legislators are too slow to adapt.
The EU and Denmark may be missing an opportunity as other countries ramp up their investments. It’s not too late to take a U-turn and change the game to secure that Europe can leverage financially on this technology advancement.
“But if it’s going to happen, we have to decide on it. A full-scale protein factory in Denmark will probably be a bit more expensive than if we built it in other countries and will require some government support. But if we build the first few, then they can be copied, and we will be able to sell hundreds around the world.”
Many thanks to Vibeke Lyngklip Svansø for this great piece.
