MicroHarvest has achieved a key milestone by demonstrating an ability to scale its production process to 10 tons per day in a single vessel, representing a ten-fold increase over its current capacity. This significant progress validates MicroHarvest’s ability to deliver microbial protein in quantities that will meet commercial demands, with plans for a full-scale facility capable of producing up to 15,000 tons annually by the end of 2026.
The trial results confirmed that strain performance and critical process parameters remain consistent with smaller-scale production, ensuring robust scalability as MicroHarvest advances toward industrial-scale operations. Additionally, the trial demonstrated the speed and resilience of MicroHarvest’s seed train—achieving the full process, from cryovial to full-scale production, over ten times faster than the traditional seed trains in the food industry.
Consistent and impressive scalability milestones achieved by MicroHarvest in the biotech industry make it an undisputed leader in the novel ingredients space and have emboldened and accelerated the company’s progress towards the first close of its Series B funding efforts.
Katelijne Bekers, CEO of MicroHarvest, said that “producers of feed and food face high pressure to adopt novel ingredients within 3-5 years, but scaling these ingredients has been a bottleneck for the B2B ingredients market. First trials require hundreds of kilos or even tons of product to test with, followed by consistent, large-scale production in the magnitude of thousands of tons. While many biotechnology startups struggle to scale their production beyond small pilot volumes in the range of a few kilos, we’ve always successfully run pilots with 50-100 kg of product. In addition, we have also found a solution to address the urgent industry need to diversify protein sources at scale now. Our demonstrated process stability at scale put us in a unique position to actually match market demand in 2026.“
MicroHarvest ran its first pilot trial less than six months after starting in the lab. Now, barely three years later, they are already demonstrating robust production at a commercial scale. The success of this new large-scale trial has solidified MicroHarvest’s confidence in the engineering parameters essential for its next production plant, putting the company on track to meet its long-term commercial production goals.
"We see that new demo factories more than often have troubles in their start-up phase, as the process is sensitive to contaminations or technical perturbations not expected at lab scale. This leads to delays that can take more than a year. In the worst case, they make profitability unachievable as production losses make a considerable dent in good unit economics,” said Jonathan Roberz, COO of MicroHarvest. “Our R&D and pilot teams focused on minimizing these problems since the beginning. Our technology minimizes the risk of contamination and focuses on quickly recovering production from technical problems. Having overcome any remaining technological barriers, MicroHarvest is committed to reaching its kiloton output target.”
MicroHarvest’s microbial fermentation process produces protein with a fraction of the carbon footprint of traditional plant- and animal-based proteins. The company is running and planning validation and application trials in salmon and shrimp with several global aquafeed producers involved, covering a million metric tons of feed. Check out their recent results on this technical article published in our Aquafeed Magazine.
