Tallinn-based ÄIO, a biotechnology company developing
sustainable, non-animal fats and oils through fermentation, has been awarded a
€1.2 million grant from Enterprise Estonia to advance its FERM-OIL project. The
total project budget is €2.3 million.
Founded in 2022 as a spin-off from TalTech (Tallinn
University of Technology), ÄIO produces food-grade fats and oils by using
specialised yeast to convert wood and agricultural by-products, such as sugars
derived from sawdust. The approach is designed to reduce reliance on animal
fats and palm oil through a faster, lower-impact production process.
To date, the company has raised €6.8 million in seed
funding and secured around €3 million in grants from Enterprise Estonia, the
Environmental Investment Centre, and the EU CBE-JU programme.
While alternative and plant-based proteins have seen rapid
progress, the food industry continues to face a shortage of sustainable lipid
ingredients that complement these products. Many early-stage lipid alternatives
struggle to scale or meet industrial and regulatory requirements. FERM-OIL aims
to address this gap by supporting the transition from laboratory development to
industrial food production.
As explained by Dr Mary-Liis Kütt, ÄIO’s Chief Innovation
Officer and lead of the project, FERM-OIL focuses on one of the most
challenging steps in food innovation: moving from lab-scale validation to
factory-scale manufacturing.
We already know that our Flavoured
Fat performs well in prototypes, from replacing cocoa powder and brown sugar to
adding a silky texture to broths and sauces. This project allows
us to validate the process on industrial lines, generate robust safety data for
the novel food dossier, and better understand consumer responses to these new
lipid ingredients.
Over the next three years, the project will advance ÄIO’s
Flavoured Fat, a lipid-rich yeast biomass designed to deliver umami flavour and
functional mouthfeel, from lab and pilot stages to validated industrial
production. The work will include optimising the fermentation process,
validating second-generation feedstocks sourced from food, forestry, and
agricultural side-streams, and transferring production to an industrial
contract manufacturing facility. Test batches will be used for downstream
processing optimisation, quality and shelf-life studies, and novel food safety
assessment.
By the end of the project, ÄIO aims to reach TRL6,
demonstrating readiness for industrial-scale production. This will include
confirming process requirements at scale and completing the safety work needed
to submit a novel food dossier to the European Commission. The project is also
expected to support follow-on investment plans for a 4,000-tonne-per-year
production facility and potential large-scale licensing agreements.
Fermentation gives us a way to turn side-streams into
stable, nutritious, functional lipids that are not dependent on climate,
seasons, or fragile global supply chains. This grant allows us to demonstrate
that our process can operate at industrial scale and that novel lipids can
become a reliable part of future food systems,
said Nemailla Bonturi, co-founder and CEO of ÄIO.
Within FERM-OIL, ÄIO will also evaluate Flavoured Fat
across savoury, bakery, and beverage applications, working with potential
customers to assess performance in their processes and gather feedback on
taste, texture, and consumer acceptance. The broader aim is to enable local
production of key lipid ingredients using manufacturers’ own side-streams,
reducing dependence on animal fats and land-intensive tropical oils.