Estonian biotechnology company ÄIO and the Center of Food and Fermentation Technologies are launching a €2.53M project to improve the speed, control and economics of microbial oil and fat production at industrial scale.
The three-year DigiFoundry 2.0 project has received up to €1.94M from the Enterprise Estonia (EIS) through its Applied Research Programme. It is supporting research and development projects by 12 Estonian companies in its 10th funding round.
The total cost of the approved projects is more than €24.6M, with companies contributing about €9.6M in their own or co-financing. ÄIO said its application ranked first among the projects approved in the funding round.
ÄIO extends its fermentation platform
DigiFoundry 2.0, also known as DF2.0, is being developed by ÄIO and applied research organisation TFTAK. The project is scheduled to run until June 2029 and will connect microbial strain development with fermentation optimisation, automation and digital process control.
The partners plan to use food, agricultural and wood industry side-streams as feedstocks for producing microbial oils and fats. The resulting ingredients are intended for food, cosmetics and other consumer applications.
DF2.0 builds on the original DigiFoundry project, which ran from 2023 to 2026. That programme developed a prototype platform for automated microbial strain design and established a Design-Build-Test-Learn workflow for microorganisms that produce specialised fats through precision fermentation.
Data and automation move into production development
The new project will expand the earlier work beyond strain development. It will bring biological research together with fermentation, automation and digital process control across the production process.
Fermentation generates data on microbial performance, process conditions, productivity and product characteristics. Integrating that data into automated development workflows can help the partners compare development cycles, identify how strains and fermentation conditions affect output, and improve process optimisation ahead of scale-up.
TFTAK will contribute expertise in synthetic biology, precision fermentation and bioprocess development. The organisation will also use the project to strengthen its ability to support clients with strain engineering, fermentation optimisation, pilot-scale testing and preparation for industrial scale-up.
ÄIO targets lower-resource oil production
ÄIO develops fermentation technologies that use organic side-streams from the food, agricultural and wood industries to produce oils and fats with specialised microorganisms. The approach is designed as an alternative to conventional oil crops and animal-derived fats.
According to ÄIO, its fermentation process can reduce land use by up to 97% and water consumption by up to 90% compared with conventional production methods. DF2.0 will focus on making these processes more efficient and scalable while allowing the use of locally available side-streams.
Petri-Jaan Lahtvee, ÄIO’s co-founder and chief operating officer, said the first DigiFoundry project created the foundation for the work now being expanded through DF2.0.
“With DF2.0, we are connecting biology, fermentation and digitalisation into one integrated production system,” Lahtvee said. “Our goal is to make microbial oil production not only sustainable, but also highly efficient and economically competitive at an industrial scale.”
ÄIO has also developed microbial oil applications outside food. The company has created alternative raw materials for cosmetics, including the biofermented RedOil used in a skin serum launched with Estonian natural cosmetics brand tilk!.
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