- Combining world-class industrially proven technology with
fermentation capacity, 21st.BIO helps customers get to scale
faster, in a risk-mitigated and cost-effective way.
- Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European
Commission, was onsite to inaugurate the pilot facility, along a
hundred other guests from the financial, political, and bio
industrial sectors.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark and
DAVIS, Calif., May 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- 21st.BIO unveiled a
new pilot plant facility in its Danish headquarters, designed to
support companies upscale their bioproduction.
21st.BIO provides services ranging from strain construction to
industrial production upscaling to customers worldwide. Combining
world-class industrially proven technology with fermentation
capacity, the company will help customers get to scale faster, in a
risk-mitigated and cost-effective way.
Why do we need pilot facilities? Upscaling mistakes cost a
lot of money and time
"In this industry, upscaling mistakes cost a lot of money and
time," explains Thomas Schmidt,
co-founder, and CEO at 21st.BIO. "For our customers, it's all about
getting the next step right. The ability to increase productivity
when also moving up in scale is what distinguishes good from
great."
21st.BIO offers this pilot facility to the market to facilitate
and accelerate the step between internal lab-scale fermentation and
large-scale production. 21st.BIO's pilot construction and deep
experience are ideal to define the important parameters and
equipment needed for optimal large-scale production of proteins via
fermentation. This will, on top of the best fermentation protocols,
for example also help customers select the best CMO for individual
project needs and limit the risk of costly failures.
21st.BIO's pilot facility is designed for industrial
production upscaling
The facility and all processing equipment are state-of-the-art,
with much equipment designed for 21st.BIO.
"Our goal with this pilot was to build a mini factory, to best
prepare customers for large scale industrial production. We
therefore wanted the process equipment to mimic what customers will
find in their next step with large-scale biomanufacturing – only
downsized to a pilot scale," explains Thorvald Ullum, Chief Technology Officer at
21st.BIO. He adds, "Our customers work alongside our experts in the
pilot plant to test various process aspects as well as build skills
and confidence for their own large-scale production."
With over 3000 liters of fermentation capacity, the facility
offers a full range of capabilities, equipment, and competences to
help customers optimize their own specific processes. The pilot
plant is focused on scaling up the production of recombinant
proteins and peptides with applications in nutrition, food and
beverages, agriculture, biomaterials, and
biopharma.
The pilot plant is designed to enable strong collaboration
between 21st.BIO and customer teams during scaling. The facility is
strategically located in the same building as the company's strain
development laboratories, allowing for joint work on further
improving the customers' production strains and fermentation
processes.
21st.BIO's pilot welcomes established industry leaders in
ingredient manufacturing as well as early-stage
startups.
The global race for biosolutions is on
Home to precision fermentation pioneers such as Novo Nordisk and
Novonesis, Denmark is a natural
leader in bioproduction. According to a McKinsey report, it is
estimated that about 60% of the input to the global economy could
over time be produced using biology. Because of this potential,
many countries are investing massively in biomanufacturing
technology to produce high quality nutrition and biomaterials
locally in a time of climate and geo-political
uncertainties.
Europe has an opportunity to
bring this leading technology and know-how to benefit the world.
Therefore, 21st.BIO's grand opening began with an exclusive
roundtable, where twenty C-level participants from the political,
financial, and industrial horizons had a lunch conversation over EU
countries' leadership in the industrial scaling of
biomanufacturing.
Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European
Commission, attended the event and underlined the high potential of
the biotech sector to address key challenges ranging from ensuring
sustainability to stabilising global food chains. She emphasised
Europe's leadership in science,
while acknowledging that taking science to markets is often
hindered by lack of sufficient funding, long regulatory procedures,
and a reduced talent pool. She also called for cooperation between
policy makers and industry players to ensure that policies are
designed while taking into account the industry's lessons
learnt.
Earlier in March, the European Commission presented its
"Communication on Biotech and Biomanufacturing" and with that a
series of actions to boost the sector in the EU. This includes
working towards simplified regulatory framework and faster access
to market, better support for scale-up, a fairer comparison with
fossil-based products, and the encouragement for more investments
to go into biotechnologies and biomanufacturing in the coming
years.
As Margrethe Vestager said during the press conference,
"Europe cannot just be the cradle
for new solutions, what is born here should also grow up and stay
here."
Ambitions for enabling the building of large-scale protein
facilities across the world
21st.BIO founders saw that too often; great bio innovations and
molecules fail to translate into commercial success. The molecule
innovation is ready and exciting, the market is there, but
production costs most often have remained too high for the products
to go mainstream and hence have real relevance for the
world.
A recent report by Boston Consulting Group highlighted that
three parameters were key to get down the cost of bioproducts:
Production strains designed for scale, mega scale factories of over
two million liters capacity, and mass market demand. This is what
21st.BIO is all about.
21st.BIO is now making the most advanced and most productive
production technology and know-how available to innovators in
industrial biotech as well as global food majors for bulk products
to be produced via fermentation. The pilot facility will support
customers' journey from the lab to large scale manufacturing, but
the journey towards industrial biomanufacturing does not stop
there. During the inauguration, senior leaders from key players of
the financial, political, and industrial sectors participated in a
roundtable discussion on what it will take to start building the
first large-scale protein factories with all the benefits of
industrial manufacturing to cost and efficiency.
Notes for editors
About 21st.BIO
Founded in 2020, 21st.BIO is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has a world-class
R&D team as well as laboratories in both Copenhagen, Denmark and Davis, California. On a mission to support bio
industrial companies globally in upscaling from molecule innovation
to large-scale production, 21st.BIO enables its customers to meet
market demands, and thereby advance the green transition globally.
21st.BIO focuses on developing industrial production technology for
proteins and other molecules of interest for food, materials, and
agricultural industries. Established as a fully integrated
end-to-end partner, 21st.BIO supports its customers from technical
assessment, strain development and optimization, production
processes and upscaling, tech transfer to large scale manufacturing
and regulatory services.
21st.BIO was founded with one simple mission: to make industrial
scale precision fermentation technology accessible to as many as
possible, so companies can successfully take their biotech
innovations to market at a competitive price.
21st.BIO's fermentation technology is in part licensed from
Novonesis, who has developed their platform over several decades.
Novonesis is a global leader in enzymes and proteins for high value
products in food, household care, and agriculture, with a market
value of approximately 6 billion
USD.
For more information about 21st.BIO, visit:
https://21st.bio/
For more information about 21st.BIO's pilot plant, visit:
https://21st.bio/pilot-plant-bioproduction/
To receive pictures of the day or to set up an exclusive
interview, contact us directly.
Press contact:
Mathilde
Pinon
Marketing & Business Development Manager
+4531543184
m.pinon@21st.bio
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