Company News

The Protein Brewery – “Masters in Brewing Proteins” – Completes Pilot Plant

The Protein Brewery (TBB), a Dutch producer of sustainable, fermented proteins, announces it has built a pilot plant for vegetable protein, equipped with a complete industrial line, at its site in Breda in the Netherlands.

“With the US approval process for Fermotein™ as a food ingredient on its way, we are ready to further explore our first market”

Last November, the company, which is listed by the Unicorn Alert platform, announced a €22M Series A round, commenting: “Fungi will play a key role to feed the world population in 2050 […] To meet the soaring demand for proteins, we need a paradigm shift. A different solution than the ones we used that caused the problem. So we decided to brew proteins — the sustainable way.”

©The Protein Brewery

TPB uses innovative fermentation technologies to produce dietary proteins that can replace animals in the food chain. The company’s main product is Fermotein™, a food ingredient with excellent nutritional value. The use of very little land and water contributes to a very sustainable profile. Fermotein™ can be produced from a variety of globally available crops such as cassava, maize, potatoes, sugar cane and sugar beet, resulting in local, scalable and efficient processes worldwide.

Certified brewing process

The pilot plant has been designed to enable the entire process of making Fermotein™. At a scale of one hundred kilograms per day, the pilot plant is equipped to handle raw materials, the brewing process, downstream processing, formulation and packaging. Following commissioning in March 2021, the plant was ready for a food safety audit in April, resulting in ISO 22000:2018 certification for TPB’s entire operation.

the-protein-brewery
©The Protein Brewery

Production trials

Since the completion of the development, installation and certification of the operation, batches of Fermotein™ have been supplied to various business partners. These partners, mostly international food manufacturers, use the samples for evaluation and development purposes as well as for production trials. In addition, the construction, testing and operation of the pilot plant has provided the data for the preferred equipment and technical parameters for the design of the commercial demonstration plant.

Wim de Laat, founder of The Protein Brewery, says: “After years of intensive research and testing in the lab, we started our journey towards commercialisation of protein products produced by fermentation technologies in 2020. I am very proud that together with the team we have been able to successfully move into the next phase. Producing Fermotein™ in a scalable way. It will allow our customers, the global food developers, to test our product and make it available for consumption worldwide. With the US approval process for Fermotein™ as a food ingredient on its way, we are ready to further explore our first market and demonstrate our food ingredient in various foods such as meat and fish substitutes, vegan snacks and many more.”

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