Pond Technologies Holdings partnered with Livalta, an AB Agri company, in 2021 to create the world’s first commercially viable production of algae-based animal feed ingredients from CO2 emissions. Pond reported that the installation of an algae lab, along with a number of Pond designed algae bioreactors, has been successfully installed on site at AB Agri's British Sugar plant in Wissington, UK.
Pond built a system of smaller 60-liter bioreactors and controls at its Canadian headquarters in Markham, Ontario, and has delivered, installed, and commissioned the system at the AB Agri Wissington location. Pond worked with AB Agri to specify the equipment needed to set up the lab which is an important step to support the 1,500L and 10,000L pilot bioreactors in Wissington in 2023. The initial algae grown in this lab will be used in the bioreactor scale up process.
Valerie Schuster, managing director of Livalta said that “this is our first step towards piloting Pond's technology to grow algae using CO2 emissions as feedstock - or, as we would put it, take a problem (CO2 emissions) out of the air and convert it into high value protein. There is still some way to go, but we have made a start with a great team effort between Livalta, AB Agri, British Sugar and Pond Technologies.”
Grant Smith, president & CEO at Pond, said that “installing the lab and initial seed train is the first stage in any algal project because doing so permits larger commercial scale photobioreactors. We are excited to report that algae growth has begun, and we anticipate that larger bioreactors will go online in 2023.”
According to a previous statement, the first product will be Spirulina.
