Melt&Marble discusses designer fats for personal care after scaling precision fermentation

12 Sep 2024 --- Melt&Marble scales its precision fermentation process for designer fats to over 10,000 liters, reaching a “critical milestone” in commercial production. The fats are developed to replicate animal fats, providing sustainable alternatives for use in cosmetics and food products. 

Personal Care Insights talks to co-founder and CEO Anastasia Krivoruchko about scaling challenges, precision-fermented fats revolutionizing personal care and how the Swedish company ensures commercial availability.

“Our designer fats can provide sustainable, bio-active lipids and customizable emollients that enhance hydration, nourishment and barrier function for both skin and hair, making them ideal for a wide range of products, including creams, lotions and balms,” says Krivoruchko.

Melt&Marble is known for using precise fermentation to produce alternative fats. The company says it also successfully boosted bioprocess performance, opening the door for various industry applications. 

The scale-up comes after Melt&Marble’s team achieved comparable performance metrics during a spring trial at the scale of a cubic meter bioreactor. The success allows the company to move forward with application pilots in personal care and alternative meat sectors. 

Anastasia Krivoruchko, co-founder and CEO of Melt&Marble.The business intends to work with partners to speed up pilot projects and hopes to commercialize its products in the upcoming years.

What challenges did you encounter in scaling the fermentation process, and how were they overcome?
Krivoruchko: One challenge in scaling up is maintaining consistent process performance parameters, such as yield and titer. To mitigate this risk, we have selected a robust industrial microorganism as our production host and invested effort into designing a robust bioprocess before initiating scale-up experiments.

Another challenge in scaling up, particularly when collaborating with external partners (as in our case), is ensuring that their large-scale equipment is compatible with our processes. Our team has dedicated considerable effort to technology transfer with our partner to thoroughly understand their equipment and capabilities. We’ve also conducted various scale-down experiments — i.e., simulating or replicating large-scale fermentation conditions on a smaller scale — to identify and address critical parameters that could be impacted during scale-up. These experiments have enabled us to make necessary adjustments to our process to mitigate risks.

How do you see precision-fermented fats revolutionizing the personal care industry compared to traditional fats?
Krivoruchko: Many of the commonly used fats in the personal care industry, such as palm oil and coconut oil, are associated with environmental and ethical concerns, particularly related to deforestation and habitat destruction. In contrast, precision fermentation offers a sustainable, localized and deforestation-free method for producing fats without compromising functionality. 

Melt&Marble is adopting an “asset-light” approach during the initial commercialization phase.Furthermore, precision fermentation allows us to produce fats with tailored properties and create the “ideal fat” for different applications; for example, we can infuse our fats with healthy bioactive fatty acids and other lipids to promote better skin health.

How do you plan to ensure the commercial viability of these fats? 
Krivoruchko: To ensure the commercial success of our fats in both the personal care and food markets, we will focus on the following key strategies for delivering sustainability and superior functionality, competitive pricing and meeting demand efficiently.

Our products must excel not only in sustainability but also in functionality. For instance, our initial product is designed to offer benefits in both performance and health profiles for food and personal care applications. Additionally, our capability to customize fats enables us to effectively address specific pain points and meet diverse customer needs.

We aim to be cost-competitive with both premium and commodity fats. We have a strategic roadmap in place to ensure our products achieve cost parity through efficient production processes and economies of scale.

To quickly and effectively meet market demand, we are adopting an “asset-light” approach during the initial commercialization phase. By partnering for production, we can launch our products swiftly and minimize upfront capital expenditures.

By Venya Patel