The quiet half of biotech: scaling it next to a sugar mill

Brevel, an Israeli biotech, and India's Wave Group announced a plant this week that grows microalgae with both sugar and light at once.

Most fermentation feeds cells sugar in the dark. Feed them light too and the same cells make chlorophyll and the colored carotenoids that sugar-only fermentation can't produce.

The scale is the news. The plant is designed for a total capacity of 300,000 liters. Brevel's current commercial bioreactor is 5,000 liters. The investment is put at 10 to 15 million dollars, construction starts later this year, and full production is targeted about 18 months out. It runs on the side streams of Wave's sugar mills, so the feedstock is a waste product sitting next door.

Early days, stated honestly: the trials on those sugar-mill byproducts are reported only as "excellent results" and are still being tuned, the cost savings aren't quantified yet, and the first long-term purchase agreements aren't signed.

Two things have to be true for industrial biotech to matter, and they're different problems. The biology has to work, and it has to work at a plant, on a cheap local feedstock, at a price a buyer will pay. The design labs get the headlines. The scale-up, from a 5,000-liter tank to 300,000 next to a sugar mill, is the quieter half that decides whether any of it reaches a shelf.

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