Startup Battlefield Company äio created a way to make edible fats from AG waste such as sawdust

äio (Eye-Eye-OH) is the god of Estonian dreams. It looks like a great suitable name to start increasing operation, called äio, from this small Baltic country that has developed a process of converting agricultural waste such as sawdust into fat in food industries and cosmetics.

This process can be a way to reduce the dependency of the world on palm oil, which has become an essential element in food and cosmetics for its impossible and conservative properties. Unfortunately, due to the need of this plant to hot moist climates, this huge industry also destroyed rainforests and other sensitive ecosystems to make room for farms.

äio He participated in the founding of the Nemailla Bonturi and Petri-Jaan Lahtvee biologists on the basis of doctoral research in Bonturi. During her studies, she invented a new microbe, a yeast strain. Instead of consuming sugar and removing carbon dioxide or alcohol, as is the case with bread and beer, this yeast consumes sugar and produces fat molecules. The company will display its technology as part of Battle start starting This year Techcrunch crashesWhich later this month in San Francisco.

Lahtvee was a professor of food technology and biology at Tallinn University in Estonia, and in 2016, he managed his biotechnology laboratory there with Pontore, his first employment. She brought her microbe with her, worked on the molecule, as they changed it to be Hardy enough to manufacture it.

Since Estonia has a large agricultural base of corn and other food pills, as well as sugar cane and wood, the laboratory studied how sugars produced from AG waste currents can feed this microbe. “We started working on this, and developing metabolic engineering tools,” Lahtvee told Techcrunch. Answer: These sugars can be consumed well.

Lahvee says, “The molecule of ice appearance” is very similar to the existing fats, “and perhaps in its strong form,” probably “is similar to fatty fat. But it is also possible to adjust the fermentation process to produce liquid oil that may make it a good alternative to manufactured oils such as canola oil/seeds.

In 2022, the founders knew that they had a commercially applied solution and launched äio in the hope of collecting adventure funds and creating commercial partnerships to submit to the market. They have raised about $ 7 million so far, and since the foundation, they have created ways to develop precise fermentation products, won the Baltic Sustainability Award 2024, and have signed more than 100 companies around the world interested in cooperation.

“We have a widespread analysis after we make our product, and so far, what we have seen is that our final product is the same as vegetable oils, except for pesticides – even more pure,” Pontory told Techcrunch:

After that, the company plans to build a fat production facility in commercial quantities by 2027, as well as technology license for cosmetics and other foodstuffs. Licensing licenses should also be obtained as food, and a country by country, probably from Singapore, which He has a history of being more open To alternative food production products.

“Of course, it is a new type of way to produce food, and we have to go through all permits and analysis,” Pontory said.

With these plans, Pontory said she hopes to show how “scientists in this small country can do something better for the world, but this is just my personal dream.”

If you want to learn more about äio from the same company – with dozens of others review, hear their stadiums, listen to guest speakers in four different stages – join us in Disrupt, 27 to October 29, in San Francisco. Learn more here.