Embion develops a catalytic biomass-processing platform that repurposes food and agricultural industry by-products into nature-derived functional ingredients for human and animal nutrition. Its technology aims to reduce the carbon footprint of food production while accelerating development of functional foods and lowering time-to-market and costs for customers. The company positions itself as a driver of upcycling in the beverage and food industries and says its solutions deliver high-value ingredients to industry leaders in nutrition and health. Embion plans to scale production capabilities and double its team within 18 months to unlock growth across multiple market opportunities. It also intends to continue securing intellectual property in animal and human health and nutrition. The company has public targets to upcycle 1 million tons of biomass and save 100 million tons of CO2 by 2025. Embion Technologies is an EPFL spin-off that develops next-generation nutritional products using a proprietary platform technology. The company’s first launched product, PREMBION, is a patented complex prebiotic for animal nutrition manufactured from brewers’ spent grains. Embion reports successful laboratory tests on 20 feedstocks that generated 80 new complex bio-actives ready for immediate commercialization. The startup has received a CHF 250,000 grant to support its upcoming Series A fundraising. Proceeds from the planned Series A are intended to scale product offerings across different markets. The team positions its technology to facilitate antibiotic-free farming and broader applications in human and animal health and nutrition. Embion Technologies develops processes to convert agricultural and other biomass residues into high-value products for the specialty ingredients and chemicals markets. Its first commercial product is a prebiotic extracted from barley spent grains that enables sugar reduction in foods and beverages and helps stimulate a healthy microbiome. The company is advancing biomass-to-biopolymers technology to transform residues into chemicals for production of 100% renewable polymers (codename PEF) that could substitute PET in food and beverage packaging and biosynthetic textiles. Embion and two EPFL laboratories are building IP around the core biomass-processing technology under a CHF 0.5 million Innosuisse grant. The grant complements an oversubscribed CHF 325k convertible note closed with private investors as part of Embion’s seed round. Embion says the funds will be used for product development and scaling up its proprietary biomass processing technology.

Total raised

$6M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Dec 2021