A new generation of emulsifiers derived from fermentation could hit the market next year, enabling companies to replace a flurry of additives derived from palm oil or petrochemical intermediates with clean label alternatives, says California-based Ruby Bio.
“To our knowledge, we are the only fermentation-derived emulsifier portfolio platform in the world,” CTO Pavan Kambam told AgFunderNews.
While commonly used emulsifiers such as DATEM, PGPR, sodium stearoyl lactylate, polysorbates and mono-and di-glycerides are approved by regulators around the world, brands are under pressure to remove “chemical-sounding” ingredients amid concerns over “ultra-processed” foods, he says.
They are also trying to avoid palm-oil derivatives amid deforestation concerns and evolving regulatory requirements.
Low-cost DSP and feedstocks, unusually high titers
While biomanufacturing is notoriously costly, Ruby Bio reckons that at scale, it will be able to compete with these widely used emulsifiers along with soy lecithin (which triggers allergen warnings), a feat possible due to three key factors, says Kambam.
First, its Non-GMO yeast strains—licensed to the startup by University of California Davis—produce unusually high titers. Second, they can feed on low-cost carbon sources. And third, they require minimal downstream processing, explains Kambam, who teamed up with Charlie Silver (CEO) to found Ruby Bio in 2022.
Because the yeast secrete the emulsifiers outside the cells, Ruby Bio avoids the costly cell-disruption step required in many fermentation processes. The emulsifiers—glycolipids combining fats and sugars—also separate naturally from the fermentation broth, simplifying recovery and cutting DSP costs, which can account for up to 70% of COGS in some biomanufacturing processes, claims Kabam.
“We stop the fermenter, let it settle, decant from the bottom and remove any residual water. That’s literally our downstream process at scale, why is why the DSP cost is so competitive.
“We can also use very cheap feedstocks such as crude glycerol, crude lactose from dairy side streams or waste molasses from the sugar industry.”
Ruby Bio recently joined the BEAM Circular Accelerator in California to test a series of ag residues such as almond and walnut shells as feedstocks, he adds. “We’ve also had really good success with processing side streams such as mother liquors from polyol processing [what’s left over following the crystallization process].”
Cost parity within reach
Ruby Bio’s goal is reaching cost parity with conventional synthetic emulsifiers, “not as an eventual aspiration, but as the engineering target that has shaped every development decision,” adds Silver. “This milestone [achieving 100g/L at small scale] puts that target within easy reach at commercial scale.”
That said, what matters is “translating this performance reliably at scale, in a product that food manufacturers can build their formulations around — and that consumers can trust,” he concedes. “But we have the platform, the process, and the team to do that.”
According to Kambam: “When we licensed the strains, the titers and productivity were not high, but we’ve maximized performance by optimizing the process and the media, without using genetic engineering.”
Polyols also in the pipeline
Ruby Bio’s platform targets several industries from food to personal care to home care and broader chemicals, says Silver. “But the one that’s really picked up in a big way recently is food emulsifiers because there’s a big push away from synthetics and there haven’t been platforms at scale that can produce them with clean label performance and low cost.”
Another major focus is drop-in replacements for fatty acids and polyols, an area attracting interest amid efforts to localize supply chains and reduce reliance on palm and other oil-based feedstocks, he adds. “This is a way of producing those same chemicals and materials using local feedstocks at a very low cost.”
Ruby Bio’s platform can produce polyols including mannitol, xylitol, erythritol, and arabitol, a sugar alcohol with 2-2.4 calories per gram (regular sugar has 4 cals/g) that some studies suggest may have microbiome-modulating or prebiotic-like effects, he says.
“Arabitol been studied quite a bit but hasn’t been produced at commercial scale before. You don’t see new entrants into the sweetener category very often, so we are pretty actively building that one out. But there’s also been quite a bit of interest in the others, especially xylitol [which is traditionally made by chemically hydrogenating xylose from hardwoods or agricultural residues].”
Regulatory, scale up, labeling
Ruby Bio has a series of different strains relevant for the food market that have been tested in everything from bakery to beverages to dressing, sauces, and ice creams, says Kambam. “So there might be two or three GRAS [filings] over the entire portfolio.”
“We aim to be fully commercial with these next year behind the first registrations,” adds Silver.
The plan is to scale up with contract manufacturers, says Silver, who notes that the simple downstream process makes the process of finding partners cheaper and easier. “We’re building out our first capacity of thousands of tons of production, and then in pretty short order, we’ve got an expansion behind that that’ll take it into tens of thousands of tons as we’re talking about replacements for the mainstream emulsifiers on the market.”
The firm, which has raised $8 million to date from backers including Nucleus Capital, The Venture Collective and Transitions First, has validated its tech at 5,000-liter scale, and says the next step is production via partners at 200,000-L scale.
Labeling is still to be determined, but will be consumer-friendly and “not chemical-sounding,” says Silver, who is “working directly with a number of global brands and channel partners” to get the products to market.
Further reading:
🎥 Future Food-Tech: Big ideas, hard truths, and the path to scale
Vivici sees 30% boost in titers, yield, via cell productivity tech from Enduro Genetics
Fermeate raises $2m to deliver “step change” in precision fermentation economics with optogenetics
🎥 Fermelanta introduces “unprecedented’ number of genes into microbes to make rare plant compounds
🎥 Guatemala as a biomanufacturing base? Sugar giant Magdalena makes its case
🎥 21st Bio on strains, scale, and the valley of death: Fixing precision fermentation’s weak links
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