IN Brief:
- SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY offers strain development, process engineering and fermentation manufacturing to external customers.
- Scale ranges from one litre laboratory fermenters to commercial vessels exceeding 100 kilolitres.
- Food ingredients are among the target outputs alongside enzymes, diagnostic materials, research reagents and other fermentation products.
Spiber has opened the fermentation and scale up platform behind its Brewed Protein materials to outside manufacturers through a new contract development and production business.
SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY combines strain development with process engineering and contract manufacturing, covering projects from one litre laboratory fermenters through to commercial vessels exceeding 100 kilolitres. Food ingredients are explicitly included among the target applications.
The Japanese biotechnology company developed the platform over almost two decades while taking its own structural proteins from laboratory work into routine commercial production. That process required Spiber to build capability across gene sequence design, strain construction, fermentation and purification rather than concentrate on a single stage.
Opening that infrastructure to third parties changes its commercial role. Instead of using the fermentation chain solely for Spiber’s own Brewed Protein materials, the company can apply the same development and production capabilities to proteins and other fermentation products designed by customers.
The service is divided into two main areas. One focuses on improving production strains, with Spiber optimising gene sequences for a target protein, introducing those sequences into proprietary microbial hosts and testing how effectively the resulting strains express the desired product.
The second takes established strains into process development and manufacturing. Customers can begin with one litre laboratory systems, scale into vessels of up to 2,000 litres at Spiber’s Tsuruoka research site in Japan and move towards commercial production at the company’s Rayong plant in Thailand, where fermenters exceed 100 kilolitres.
Moving between those scales is one of the central challenges in industrial fermentation. A microorganism that performs well in a small laboratory vessel will not necessarily behave identically once working volume increases by several orders of magnitude.
Larger fermenters alter oxygen transfer, mixing, heat removal, nutrient distribution and process control. Changes that appear minor at bench scale can affect cell growth or product yield once the same organism is operating throughout a much larger vessel.
Process development therefore has to advance alongside the biological strain. Agitation, aeration, feed strategy, temperature and harvest timing can all influence output, while downstream purification must recover the target material consistently after fermentation is complete.
Spiber says its own production strains have reached protein titres of 50 grams per litre in commercial facilities. The company presents that as an operating production figure rather than a laboratory maximum, using its own manufacturing experience as evidence for the scale up capability being offered to customers.
For projects at an earlier stage, Spiber is also publishing internal benchmarking from its sequence optimisation work. The company says optimised sequences outperformed original benchmark sequences across more than 90% of proteins tested internally, although performance will vary by target molecule and production organism.
Food ingredients sit alongside industrial enzymes, diagnostic raw materials and research reagents in the initial service scope. The platform therefore offers companies developing fermentation derived ingredients access to manufacturing infrastructure without requiring them to build commercial vessels before demand is proven.
Capacity becomes particularly important once a fermentation project moves beyond laboratory development. Bench equipment is widely available, while pilot and commercial vessels suitable for specialist microbial processes are less common and can become a bottleneck during scale up.
Spiber allows individual stages to be commissioned separately, meaning customers can use the platform for laboratory evaluation, pilot development or full manufacturing rather than committing immediately to the complete chain.
The company also says the same research and process teams remain involved from early consultation through delivery. Continuity between strain development and scale up can reduce the risk of process decisions being lost when a project moves between organisations or facilities.
Brewed Protein remains a separate product business and is used mainly in textiles rather than food. Developing it, however, forced Spiber to establish the fermentation, purification and commercial production systems now being opened to other sectors.
The company operates research and development in Tsuruoka and commercial production in Rayong. Food ingredients are specifically named among the applications available through SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY, putting infrastructure originally developed for structural proteins within reach of food technology businesses.
SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY will make its public debut at BioJapan in Yokohama from 7 to 9 October. Its longer term performance will depend on whether the scale up experience gained from Spiber’s own proteins transfers effectively across different organisms, products and manufacturing requirements.
