From the idea to market: pre-industrial bioprocesses demonstration

One of the key challenges in the process of developing new bioproducts is to overcome the transition period in which a technology under development is envisaged as promising, but too new to validate its commercial potential and, therefore, to attract the necessary capital to be invested in order to achieve its final development and application.

Small biotech companies and startups, technology and R&D centers as well as companies demand support in order to ensure the project maturity degree required by the industry, given that their technology needs to be optimized, validated and scaled up in order to penetrate the market. 

In order to cover this gap, and thus accompany and give support to the biotech industry, the Biochemical Processes Unit of the BIO2C (www.bio2c.es) of CENER (National Renewable Energy Centre of Sapin) offers process development services, scaling up and production of first pre-commercial batches. These facilities include pre-treatment, hydrolysis and fermentation units from laboratory scale to several cubic meters devoted to demonstrate the valorization of different biomasses, which can range from agricultural or lignocellulosic residues, to agro-industrial residues, or urban organic residues for the production of biobased polymers, biostimulants, sustainable sugars, enzymes or biopesticides among others.

These type of alliances allow companies to demonstrate their technology in a faster and cheaper way, while at the same time they can count on state-of-the-art facilities, with experienced personnel, prepared and capable of solving the challenges raised by this phase of the R&D. All this complemented of course with ad-hoc advice along the entire project lifecycle, and a final economic and environmental assessment.