MOA Foodtech raises €3.3 million to scale fermentation ingredients and commercial expansion

MOA Foodtech has raised €3.3 million in a funding round backed by Swanlaab Innvierte AgriFood Tech, EIC Fund and CDTI-Innvierte, as the Spanish biotechnology company moves into a new phase of commercial expansion.

• MOA Foodtech raised €3.3 million from Swanlaab Innvierte AgriFood Tech, EIC Fund and CDTI-Innvierte to support commercial growth and manufacturing scale-up.
• The company planned to increase production with manufacturing partners from 120,000-liter to 225,000-liter bioreactors as customers progressed toward commercial launches.
• Funding will also support new health and nutraceutical ingredients and expansion of MOA’s technology licensing model and proprietary Albatros AI platform.

The Madrid-based company develops functional ingredients by combining biomass fermentation with its Albatros computational platform, which uses AI to identify microorganism-feedstock combinations and optimize fermentation conditions.

MOA uses agri-food side streams as fermentation feedstocks, seeking to convert materials that might otherwise be sold into animal feed or discarded into higher-value ingredients for food and pet food applications.

Its existing portfolio includes MOA Q5, a multifunctional egg replacer and emulsifier designed for products including sauces and bakery applications, and MOA Yeast, which is intended to improve taste, texture and nutritional value. MOA Yeast FeG is its dedicated product for pet food and animal nutrition.

The company said its current ingredients were produced using non-GMO microorganisms with established safety status for food use in the United States and Europe.

The new capital comes as MOA moves from product and customer validation toward increasing commercial sales and supporting customers taking products from application trials into market launches.

A major part of that effort will be increasing the scale available through its manufacturing partners from 120,000-liter to 225,000-liter bioreactors.

“This investment marks the next stage of MOA's journey,” said Bosco Emparanza, CEO & Co-Founder of MOA Foodtech. “We've demonstrated our technology and successfully launched our first ingredients. Now our focus is accelerating commercial expansion, scaling production with our manufacturing partners, and expanding our portfolio into new categories, including health and nutraceutical ingredients.”

Alongside its existing food and pet food portfolio, MOA is developing ingredients targeting health and nutraceutical applications.

The company also plans to expand its technology licensing model, allowing industrial partners to deploy MOA fermentation processes and use Albatros to develop and optimize new fermentation-based products.

Over the medium term, MOA intends to take the business into additional geographic markets and applications across the food and pet food industries.

“We believe MOA combines a differentiated AI-enabled fermentation platform with market-validated functional ingredients highly innovative and attractive for the agrifood industry,” said Xana Belastegui, General Partner at Swanlaab Innvierte AgriFood Tech Fund. “As demand grows for sustainable, high-performance ingredients, Swanlaab looks forward to supporting MOA’s industrial scale-up, portfolio development and international commercial expansion.”

The investment brings together private agrifood venture capital with European and Spanish public investment through EIC Fund and CDTI-Innvierte.

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