AmphiStar secures EU funding to scale up sustainable biosurfactant production

AmphiStar has received €12.5 million (US$14.6 million) from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to scale its production of clean biosurfactants in personal care. With the funding, the ingredient AmphiCare, launched last year, made from upcycled biowaste from feedstock, will be commercialized in the North American market.  

“The EIC funding will enable us to scale the production of a first novel biosurfactant from our biosurfactant platform technology and enable its market penetration,” Sophie Roelants, COO and co-founder of AmphiStar, tells Personal Care Insights.  

The funding consists of a €2.5 million (US$2.9 million) grant and a €10 million (US$11.7 million ) equity investment, and will accelerate AmpiStar’s commercial launch and speed up its production processes. 

The company aims to offer formulators ingredients that avoid using fossil fuel resources or mainly use agriculture for their production. 

“There is a fair demand from formulators in light of consumer and regulatory pressure. Sustainability is important to many consumers, especially in personal care, and many formulators are listening and hence looking for a sustainable alternative,” says Roelants. 

“Thanks to our biosurfactant portfolio, we can offer the much-needed variety in biosurfactants that the formulators seek. To suit specific applications, we can produce biosurfactants with slightly different properties and behaviours.”

Surfactants are a functional and clean alternative to synthetic or virgin crop-based options. 

Scaling production

AmphiStar surfactants are a functional and clean alternative to existing synthetic or virgin crop-based surfactants. 

“By enabling the scaling of production and lowering the cost of goods, it will allow us to diversify the much-needed variation of biosurfactants and serve the home and personal care market, but will also explore the use in other industries because surfactants are important in many industries,” says Roelants.

The company’s synthetic biology platform is designed to create molecules tailored to meet the requirements for specific applications, such as performance and behavior. 

“We now look forward to further scaling production of our commercially available products and to bringing a first novel biosurfactant from our biosurfactant platform technology to market, while expanding our range of products beyond our current offerings,” adds Roelants.

For the ecosystem

AmphiStar upcycles bio-based waste and side streams as feedstock for fermentation processes. This provides a cleaner alternative to surfactants while avoiding using unsustainable virgin crops, such as palm oil or sugar.

These crops are associated with deforestation and habitat loss, and require extensive land, chemical, and fossil resource inputs.

AmphiStar’s CEO, Pierre-Franck Valentin, says the funding reflects EIC’s confidence in AmphiStar’s ability to transform one of the key chemical markets. 

“With growing consumer pressure on industry to offer less harmful products, the financial support ensures that we will continue to replace environmentally damaging synthetic surfactants with bio-based alternatives that retain functionality and performance while being kind to people and our wider ecosystem,” he says.

The company says a life cycle analysis test demonstrated that the biosurfactants reduced global warming potential.Combating global warming with waste

Roelants tells us the biosurfactants can be made from a number of agri-food waste and side stream feedstocks and can be adapted according to what is available, as long as the material’s specs are right for the process.

“For example, we could use potato peels, a by-product of industrial fried potatoes, or we might use what is left over from the refinement of sugar canes or beets.”

The company says a life cycle analysis test demonstrated that the biosurfactants reduced global warming potential by fourfold compared to non-upcycled sophorolipids. It also showed a sixfold reduction compared to synthetic sodium laureth sulfate and over a ninefold reduction compared to Amine Oxides. 

AmphiStar says its ingredients require significantly less water and land and have substantially decreased impacts on human health, ecosystem quality, and resource availability.

Roelants adds that AmphiStar is actively working to scale up its processes and reduce the cost of its product, making the biosurfactants more available and competitive. 

The funding and North American scale-up strategy follows AmphiStar’s recent partnership with Kensing.