PPTI Web Exclusive: Duckweed and disruption – Aspyre Foods’ blueprint for resilient proteins

For Thomas Bartleman, Co-founder & CEO of Aspyre Foods, duckweed and molecular farming are the keys to building flexible protein supply chains that can withstand climate shocks and geopolitical turbulence

Global food systems have never been more efficient – or more vulnerable. Rising costs, fragile supply chains, and climate volatility mean that a single drought, war, or trade dispute can send shockwaves through protein markets worldwide. For Thomas Bartleman, Co-founder & CEO of Aspyre Foods, these weaknesses aren’t isolated problems but symptoms of a design limitation.

“The global protein supply chain is fragile. It is vulnerable to increasing resource scarcity, geopolitical instability and fragmentation, and climate volatility, and it was designed and optimized for cost and efficiency, not resilience,” he says.

Aspyre’s answer is to rethink protein production from the ground up. The company is building a platform around duckweed, a plant with remarkable properties: rapid growth, high protein content, minimal water needs, and the ability to thrive on non-arable land. By pairing duckweed with molecular farming, Aspyre aims to produce dairy proteins such as casein alongside Rubisco, one of nature’s most abundant and versatile plant proteins. The goal is not only to supply food manufacturers with high-performance ingredients but to prove that resilience itself can be a competitive advantage.

From dairy farm to molecular farming

Bartleman’s perspective is rooted in both personal experience and systems thinking. Having grown up on a dairy farm, he saw firsthand the fragility of industrialized production. Later, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the vulnerabilities of global food supply chains became impossible to ignore.

“We evaluated several technologies to address food supply chain inefficiency and volatility,” he recalls. “At first, I wasn’t convinced we had the right fit. But after conversations with some of our current investors and digging deeper into the earned insights, the advantages of molecular farming became crystal clear. Once the puzzle pieces fell into place, we were convinced we were on the right path.”

“If we only extract casein from biomass that’s rich in multiple valuable ingredients, we’re leaving 70-80% of the value on the table”

For Bartleman, molecular farming offered the best of both worlds: the precision and power of modern biotechnology, combined with the scalability and sustainability of plants. Duckweed, with its speed of growth and functional protein profile, emerged as the ideal host. “When you evaluate it purely in terms of oxygen and carbon dioxide, humans – and other mammals – are highly dependent on plants,” he says. “So why not harness one of the most powerful plants for protein production?”

Thinking in systems, not silos

This choice of platform reflects a larger philosophy: resilience comes from systems-level design, not piecemeal fixes. Until recently, food producers have treated supply chain fragility, resource scarcity, geopolitical risks, and climate volatility as separate issues, Bartleman notes.

“These are interconnected and systemic problems, and most food producers are now adopting this framework of thinking,” he says. “Supply chain rigidity means that when Ukraine or Argentina’s grain exports are disrupted, global food prices spike. Resource scarcity drives competition for water and arable land in already-stressed regions. Geopolitical volatility affects energy costs and trade routes. Climate volatility makes previously reliable agricultural regions unpredictable. You have to consider the system as a whole in order to build resilience.”

Duckweed and molecular farming, he suggests, address all four challenges at once. Year-round production creates flexibility. Minimal water and land use reduces pressure on scarce resources. Regionalized cultivation lowers exposure to geopolitical trade disruptions. And duckweed’s natural resilience, coupled with controlled environments, provides a buffer against climate shocks. “It happens to be excellent at carbon sequestration too, which is great for our planet,” he adds.

Building the brewery model of protein production

What this looks like in practice is a shift from centralized, fragile supply chains to distributed, flexible networks. Bartleman compares it to brewing. “A distributed protein system changes the dependency equation. Instead of one massive facility supplying the world, you build regional hubs near food manufacturers, like breweries rather than oil refineries. Each one produces consistent ingredients with minimal external inputs – mainly sunlight, water, nutrients, and energy that can be sourced locally.”

Trust in such a system, he suggests, comes from transparency and performance. “Partners need to see that distributed doesn’t mean inconsistent. The key is proving you can maintain quality and reliability while reducing risk. When people understand how their ingredients are produced, trust builds more naturally.”

Beyond single-ingredient thinking

Central to Aspyre’s model is a focus on multi-output systems. “If we only extract casein from biomass that’s rich in multiple valuable ingredients, we’re leaving 70-80% of the value on the table,” Bartleman says. “You wouldn’t dig for gold and throw away the silver and copper.”

By developing both casein and Rubisco, Aspyre is creating multiple value streams from the same biomass. This diversification provides an economic hedge and reshapes cost structures. “If casein demand softens, Rubisco provides revenue. If Rubisco pricing becomes competitive, casein helps buffer. When multiple products share the same production costs, each can be priced more competitively while strengthening the business overall.”

The functional pairing is also powerful. Casein provides the irreplaceable properties of dairy, especially cheese – stretch, melt, and coagulation – while Rubisco contributes emulsification, foaming stability, gelling, and complete amino acid nutrition. “Together, they deliver functional completeness with supply chain simplicity,” he says. “Instead of blending multiple proteins and additives, manufacturers can achieve high performance with two complementary proteins.”

Unlocking Rubisco’s potential

Despite being the most abundant protein on Earth, Rubisco has been largely inaccessible to food manufacturers because it is challenging to extract cost-efficiently and starts to degrade quickly after harvest. Traditional systems, which would be reliant on transporting tons of plant leaves over long distances, might struggle to make it commercially viable.

Duckweed changes that. Cultivation and extraction can happen side by side, preserving functionality at scale. “Rubisco’s foaming capacity is particularly compelling compared to egg white and whey,” Bartleman explains. “It also has better solubility than egg white proteins, and gelation properties that open up new applications. We’re only beginning to uncover the breadth of its advantages, but its versatility excites us most.”

For manufacturers seeking alternatives to animal-derived proteins, Rubisco could become indispensable. Low allergenicity, high digestibility, and complete nutrition add to its appeal, making it as relevant for consumers as it is for formulators.

Designing for regulation and volatility

Aspyre is also mindful of regulatory uncertainty. Food regulations are in flux worldwide, from tighter oversight in the USA to more permissive approaches in the UK and Asia. For Bartleman, the answer is to design systems that can satisfy the strictest standards, then benefit when frameworks are lighter.

“Contained cultivation addresses environmental release, contamination control, and traceability from the start,” he says. “We’re not as dependent on soil quality, weather, or seasonal cycles, which gives us more consistent operating conditions at a time when volatility is increasing everywhere else.”

That consistency also enables geographic flexibility. “We can respond to opportunities wherever they emerge – Singapore, Australia, the USA, Europe – without being tied to where specific crops grow. Location-agnostic production means we can expand based on partnerships and market logic rather than geography.”

Hard choices and long-term bets

For a startup, choosing an unproven technology over safer, more well known methods might seem risky. But for Bartleman, the long-term logic was unavoidable. “There were more established solutions available, but they had similar vulnerabilities to we wanted to solve for. Molecular farming was less proven, but it offered clear systemic advantages. We chose long-term strategic position over short-term certainty.”

“Resilience isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s a competitive advantage”

His advice to others is to think about future flexibility. “Your production approach determines your entire option set. Ask yourself: does this approach give you more flexibility or less? Sometimes the more challenging technical path creates more favourable business conditions later on. You have to align the choice with your vision and capabilities – there is no one-size-fits-all answer.”

The power of complementarity

If there is one theme the industry underestimates, Bartleman says, it is complementarity. “Humans love a one-size-fits-all solution, but that’s not how resilient food systems should work. Resilient systems require complementary elements – proteins and ingredients, methods, supply chains, distribution strategies. The companies that integrate complementarity will have an edge in building long-term value.”

He frames it in simple terms: resilience isn’t a luxury, it’s a business advantage. And sometimes, the lesson comes from unlikely places.

(Main picture shows Thomas Bartleman, Co-founder & CEO alongside Inge Mendelsohn, Co-Founder & CSO)