From left: Ian Roberts, CTO at Bühler. Claudia Neuhold, Business Development Food and Biotech at ZETA and Erika Georget, Head of Bioprocessing at Bühler.
Uzwil (Switzerland),
Leobendorf (Austria) June 28, 2022 – Swiss Bühler Group today announces the
formation of a new joint venture with Austrian pharmaceutical and biotechnology
company ZETA. The new company, Eridia, will engineer food and feed
biotechnology plants primarily in the fields of precision fermentation and
cellular agriculture. ZETA brings extensive experience in scaling pilot scale
to industrial bio pharma. Bühler is a market leader in providing technology and
processing expertise for the food and feed industry and is focused on creating
more sustainable value chains for its customers worldwide. Eridia,
headquartered in Leobendorf, Austria, is a 50/50 joint venture that will
develop solutions to meet the rising global demand for food and feed while
reducing the impact on the environment.
“Harnessing bioprocessing for the food and feed industry is not new, but it needs to be applied at scale. Technologies such as precision fermentation and cellular agriculture offer the potential to drastically reduce the land and CO2e footprints of food and feed production. This is a potential pathway to produce food and feed for a growing world population whilst respecting the limits of the planet. We want to accelerate the development of this market and better serve our customers. ZETA is a fantastic partner with which to achieve this,” says Ian Roberts, Chief Technology Officer, Bühler.
The 50/50 joint venture, Eridia will enable Bühler and ZETA to contribute further to the field of precision fermentation as well as to the newer field of cellular agriculture.
Precision fermentation uses microorganisms as cell factories to efficiently produce valuable nutrients and functional ingredients such as proteins, omega-3 rich oils, or natural pigments. Developed further, it can also be used to recreate animal products such as meat or fish. This new field of cellular agriculture can help alleviate the pressure on ecosystems by reducing the impact of food and feed production on arable land, biodiversity, and greenhouse gas emissions. With cellular agriculture, meat products can be cultivated that are identical in structure and taste to the animal counterpart without raising animals.
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