Bioprocessing partnership for future of food and feed

The Bühler Group is today announcing the formation of a new joint venture with Austrian pharmaceutical and biotechnology company ZETA.

The new company, Eridia, will engineer food and feed biotechnology plants primarily in the fields of precision fermentation and cellular agriculture. ZETA brings extensive experience in scaling pilot scale to industrial bio pharma. Bühler, meanwhile, is a market leader in providing technology and processing expertise for the food and feed industry and is focused on creating more sustainable value chains for its customers worldwide. Eridia, headquartered in Leobendorf, Austria, is a 50/50 joint venture that will develop solutions to meet the rising global demand for food and feed while reducing the impact on the environment.

“Harnessing bioprocessing for the food and feed industry is not new, but it needs to be applied at scale," commented Ian Roberts, Chief Technology Officer, Bühler. "Technologies such as precision fermentation and cellular agriculture offer the potential to drastically reduce the land and CO2e footprints of food and feed production. This is a potential pathway to produce food and feed for a growing world population whilst respecting the limits of the planet. We want to accelerate the development of this market and better serve our customers. ZETA is a fantastic partner with which to achieve this."

The 50/50 joint venture, Eridia will enable Bühler and ZETA to contribute further to the field of precision fermentation as well as to the newer field of cellular agriculture.

Precision fermentation uses microorganisms as cell factories to efficiently produce valuable nutrients and functional ingredients such as proteins, omega-3 rich oils, or natural pigments. Developed further, it can also be used to recreate animal products such as meat or fish. This new field of cellular agriculture can help alleviate the pressure on ecosystems by reducing the impact of food and feed production on arable land, biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emissions. With cellular agriculture, meat products can be cultivated that are identical in structure and taste to the animal counterpart without raising animals.

“We are very excited about the joint venture with Bühler," added Andreas Marchler, Managing Director of ZETA. "We see this as an opportunity to bring our expertise in biotechnology to bear in order to provide more sustainable pathways for food and feed production at a global scale."

“We see that the existing fermentation space for food is already developing further, and cultured foods are progressing well," concluded Erika Georget, Head of Bioprocessing at Bühler. "Eridia allows us to play a key role in the development of these new food and feed businesses."

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