$11.4m USD Secured to Drive the Next Generation of Synbio-enabled Biomanufacturing
In 2020, our company secured a total of $3.25m USD in seed funding to validate an all new full-service biomanufacturing platform. At the end of 2021, we announced the close of our pre-series A funding round, infusing $11.4 million USD into our organization. With these funds, we have extended our startup lease to launch our company to the next level. Importantly, through this effort we have attracted the attention of a fresh round of highly strategic investors who are now on the journey with us– a journey to change the way humanity leverages the wisdom of biology to produce the products we need. In this blog, learn about our work, vision, and outlook for 2022.
Why the Provectus Algae Platform
Our ability to collaborate with biology at the cellular level has the power to solve important challenges and simultaneously provide better products and materials in every sense: from price and performance to sustainability and production efficiency. A transition to truly sustainable manufacturing is a promise that biology can deliver on, and we are developing a platform that will play a key role in this important revolution.
While much of the industry focuses on yeast, bacterial, and mammalian cell vehicles for bioproduction, we take the path less traveled in unlocking the extraordinary potential of microalgae. As the long overlooked ancestor of all plants and animals, this well established class of marine species has the potential to increase the efficiency of specialty ingredient production when compared to conventional farming practices. For~ 1-2 billion years these aquatic microorganisms have being mastering the process of transforming light and CO2 into organic matter. Now, imagine actually reducing CO2 as we manufacture the ingredients we need without dependence on arable land and freshwater by tapping into microalgae’s ancient skillset. It’s not as far-fetched as you may think. In fact, this is the very goal that the Provectus Algae platform seeks to bring to life.
Our Vision?
Our vision is to be the most innovative ingredient manufacturer in the world. We will achieve this by hiring mission driven learning machines who care about the impact our vision promises and are passionate about doing the important work to bring about this new reality. The activation of our vision relies on the following three pillars.
- Next Generation Foundry: Bioprospecting and strain development. Find solutions in nature that already exist and engineer new solutions through the most advanced synthetic biology tools.
- All new approach to production: Enabled by Precision Photosynthesis® and proprietary cGMP compliant componentry. Automated, scalable, repeatable, and deployable anywhere in the world.
- Customer driven direction: Biomanufacturing as a service, from bench to industrial scale. Client-driven product development projects informed directly by the most pressing market needs.
The past 12 months
We are a completely different company today from our humble position last year, having grown from 8 to 22 team members. Our engineering team has relentlessly iterated on the most novel and advanced photobioreactors in existence today. Our product development team has been busy bioprospecting: identifying multiple high value molecules needed in key markets that are already made naturally in microalgae. We have advanced two products through development including complete techno-economic models using real world pilot data from our lab. Commercial viability is now truly in our sights.
The next 12 months
We open the door to this next phase: the challenge of showing unequivocally that our technology is a step change in biomanufacturing approach in the truest sense. There are three major deliverables that we will continue to drive forward in 2022.
- Production of an animal therapeutic in our cGMP 20,000 litre facility
- Production of a food colouring product in our 200,000 litre facility
- Formation of new client partnerships that leverage our “Foundry as a service” to develop the next generation of bioproducts.
Who’s it for?
The success of the Provectus Algae platform will see our ingredients in an extraordinarily wide and diverse range of products on store shelves, in pharmacies, and in use in agriculture. If we do our job well, our products will be ubiquitous, supporting innovative products in the background. We engage at the top of the supply chain, with tier-1 suppliers and product formulators, improving the performance and sustainability of products across all categories.
We describe it as “Nature, accelerated,” which represents the commoditisation of Synthetic Biology enabled by a true end-to-end biomanufacturing platform. Spanning from product identification and development through to pilot and industrial scales, Provectus Algae makes microalgae biomanufacturing possible through one consolidated offering.
Are you our next team member?
If our vision resonates with you, and you are someone that really cares about working for a company that seeks to bring about extraordinary positive change, we want to hear from you.
We are a diverse team of passionate experts from 11 different countries, spanning a wide range of professional disciplines including IT, industrial engineering, biology, mechatronics, and business. This makes for an interesting and exciting workplace. While we have significant variation in our heritage and our craft, what unites us is that we are most comfortable when we are growing, demanding that we are challenged every day by a mission that is worth showing up for.
We know how to knuckle down and get the job done, when to pop up for air to ensure creativity continues to flow and also when to drop our tools and have fun together to refresh our perspective.
See our careers page for current job openings, if there is nothing that fits but you feel really passionate about our mission, get in contact through our contact us page. We would be delighted to hear from you.
Looking to the Future at Provectus Algae
All in all, this successful funding round will allow us to grow our team, form new partnerships, and bring new microalgae-made products to market. While we are extremely proud of how far we’ve come, we can’t wait to do even more in 2022 and beyond. Truly, we are excited to be here and are grateful to our team members, partners, investors, and friends that have helped us get this far. We cannot wait to show you all what’s next.
Here’s to the future at Provectus Algae!