Espoo, Finland-based eniferBio, a biotech company, announced on Wednesday that it has secured €11M in a Series A round of funding.
The round was led by the Netherlands-based global aquaculture investment fund Aqua-Spark.
Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment) and Valio, Voima Ventures, and Nordic Foodtech VC also joined the round.
The company says the raised capital will help it to begin scaling up the production of its PEKILO mycoprotein powder from its current 5 kg/day by more than 1,000 fold to more than 5 tons a day. The company will also seek Novel Food approval from the EU and other markets.
eniferBio: Dream of five fungi-mad scientists
eniferBio is the brainchild of co-founders Simo Ellilä, Heikki Keskitalo, Joosu Kuivanen, Anssi Rantasalo, and Ville Pihlajaniemi. All of them have a strong background in biorefining technologies, bioprocess engineering, and fungal biology.
Founded in 2020 as the spin-off company of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, eniferBio aims to develop and commercialise the proprietary PEKILO technology.
“We use a proprietary fungal fermentation process to convert by-products from the agri- and food industries into sustainable protein ingredients,” says Simo Ellilä, CEO of eniferBio to Silicon Canals.
“Today, we humans derive all our protein from the animal and plant kingdoms – but fungi represent a huge untapped opportunity. Fungi are nature’s masters of recycling, and we harness their ability to grow on just about anything,” he continues.
“By-products from agricultural or forest industries are converted into feed-grade mycoprotein ingredients, while the by-products of the starch or dairy industries, for example, can be converted into food-grade mycoprotein ingredients,” adds Ellilä.
The PEKILO process
PEKILO is a fungus that, through a special fermentation process, can produce a dried powder rich in protein and has a vast variety of usage cases, such as pet food and aquafeed.
“We have a continuous, fully integrated process, which was originally developed already in the 1970s to valorise forest industry side streams,” says Ellilä.
Explaining the production process of PEKILO mycoprotein powder, Ellilä says, “Liquid by-products, like dairy whey filtrates or starch wash waters, are fed continuously into steel fermentation tanks (bioreactors).”
“The PEKILO fungus consumes organic matter, such as carbohydrates, from the liquids to grow. The liquid containing the growing fungal biomass looks somewhat like a porridge. After the fermentation process, we harvest the fungal biomass and dry it into a powder. The remaining liquid is then substantially free of organic matter and can be recycled back at the factory. So the industrial by-products are mainly converted into mycoprotein and water by our process.”
Using the same proprietary technology and fermentation process, the Finnish company can upcycle by-products from diverse agri-, food- and forest industry processes into its PEKILO mycoprotein.
It consists of up to 70 per cent protein, 20–30 per cent of good-quality fibre, about 10 per cent of fats and minerals, and has a high concentration of vitamin B.
The production process is efficient, uses very little water, doesn’t require large land areas, and does not cause eutrophication like traditional agriculture.
“Our CO2 emissions come primarily from the electricity and steam used to run the process, and we strive to use the greenest energy sources available, such as wind, solar, and hydro,” he says.
Currently, PEKILO mycoprotein powder is approved in Europe for use in animal nutrition.
“Within animal nutrition, we primarily look to aquaculture and pet food due to the high growth in demand for high-quality high-protein ingredients in these sectors.”
Partnerships
At present, eniferBio has ongoing partnerships with big global companies in the feed and food industries such as Skretting, the global aquafeed division of Nutreco, Purina for pet food, and Valio for consumer food products.
The company is now planning to develop products fit for consumers through collaboration with Valio, a major player in the international dairy ingredients market.
The Investor
Aqua-Spark is a global investment fund, active in 22 countries with investors across 30 countries, building a portfolio of solutions across the aquaculture value chain.
With €475M in assets under management, each investment is chosen for its potential to generate financial returns while also activating positive environmental and social outcomes.
“We are very excited to work with eniferBio to scale PEKILO as a positive ingredient in the sustainable aquaculture feed of the future,” says Lissy Smit, CEO of Aqua-Spark.
“Greening aquaculture feed by eliminating our reliance on wild ingredients and reducing our footprint is one of our biggest priorities in getting to a more sustainable aquaculture industry. EniferBio’s alternative feed ingredient serves as a replacement for soy in aquafeed. It significantly reduces land and water usage. Furthermore, early trials suggest that it has the potential to improve growth performance and immune response in fish.”
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