The Protein Brewery: fermenting the protein of the future

Brewing protein? Yes, you read that right.

Since 2019 The Protein Brewery has been developing technology that uses fungi to brew protein. Their goal is to provide more sustainable, healthy and affordable high-grade proteins by using only a fraction of available land and water. Its groundbreaking technology granted them a spot on the KvK Innovatie Top 100 that same year.

Wim de Laat, founder & CEO of The Protein Brewery

From idea to commercialization

The Protein Brewery originally started off as BioscienZ, a research lab that developed proprietary technologies for animal-free agriculture and non-chemical farming. In 2019 they parted ways, with TPB focusing on the production of food proteins by means of fermentation. Their trademarked product is Fermotein, a food ingredient that can be used for meat substitutes, processed meats, bread, protein bars, bakery products, protein shakes and more. It completely outperforms the meat industry in terms of environmental impact: compared to beef, it uses 100 times less land and 20 times less water.

In November 2020, TPB raised € 22 million in a Series A investment, which secured the realization of a demo plant for commercial production of Fermotein™. In June 2021 TPB first completed its pilot plant in Breda. It has been designed to facilitate the full process of producing Fermotein™. The pilot plant is equipped to handle raw materials, the brewing process, downstream processing, formulation and packaging. The preparations for the demo plant with a complete industry line and a production capacity of 1,000 kg per day, are on track. Production is anticipated to start in the first half of 2022.

In regards to the future, the team continuously strives to make this world more sustainable, creating a healthier life for future generations. To do that, they will continue to make Fermotein™ even healthier, and develop other protein products that replace animal protein, like egg-white.

Scaling with ScaleUpFood

In April 2021 we were pleased to welcome The Protein Brewery to the ScaleUpFood Spring class. We asked the founder and CEO, Wim de Laat, about his experience in the program. He shared his key learnings: “the introduction to The Art of Scaling was very impressive, it was an eye opener in many ways. I recognised so many dilemmas that I faced in the 10 years of growing a company.” As the team prepares to scale, the framework can be seen as a blueprint for growth. Or the way Wim puts it: “the whole team is aligned and knows what to expect in the coming year – transitioning from founder to CEO, from product to commercialization, from team to company”.

The ScaleUpFood program aims to provide CEOs the headspace to zoom out from day-to-day operations and identify their scaling challenges, which allows them to prioritize the next steps. And we were glad to hear we enabled Wim and his team to achieve that – “All the things we need to work on are in a framework. It’s not chaos anymore, it’s structured”.

“All the things we need to work on are in a framework. It’s not chaos anymore, it’s structured”