Startup Battlefield Company äio invented a method to make edible fats from AG waste like sawdust

Äio (pronounced ey-oh) is the Estonian god of dreams. It seems a gently appropriate namesake for an increasing startup, called äio, of this small Baltic country which has developed a process to transform agricultural waste such as fat in fat and cosmetic industries.

This process could be a means of reducing world dependence on palm oil, which has become a basic food for food and cosmetics for its emulsifying and conservative properties. Unfortunately, due to the need for this factor of hot wet climates, this massive industry has also notoriously destroyed tropical forests and other sensitive ecosystems to make room for farms.

Äio was co-founded by scientists from biotechnology Nemailla Bouturi and Petri-Jaan Lahtvee based on doctoral research in Bonturi. During her studies, she invented a new microbe, a yeast strain. Instead of consuming sugar and producing carbon dioxide or alcohol as with bread and beer, this yeast consumes sugar and produces fat molecules. The company will show its technology in the Startup battlefield at this year Techcrunch Disrupt, which takes place later this month in San Francisco.

Lahtvee was a professor of food technology and bio-engineering at the Tallinn University of Tallinn in Estonia and, in 2016, directed its own biotechnology laboratory with BONTURI its first rental. She brought her microbe with her, and they worked on the molecule, modifying it to be robust enough to be made.

As Estonia has a large agricultural base of corn and other food grains, as well as sugar cane and wood, the laboratory has studied how the sugars produced from these AG waste flows could feed this microbe. “We started working there, by developing metabolic engineering tools,” said Lahtvee at Techcrunch. The answer: it could consume these sugars very well.

The “fat profile of the molecule is very similar to existing fats,” says Lahtvee, and, in its solid fat, “probably looks like chicken fat”. But it is also possible to modify the fermentation process to also produce liquid oil which could make a good alternative to oils made such as canola / rapeseed oil.

In 2022, the founders knew that they had a commercially viable solution launched äio in the hope of collecting venture capital funds and establishing commercial partnerships to put it on the market. So far, they have collected about $ 7 million and, since the foundation, have created methods to develop precision fermentation products, have won the Baltic Sustainability Award 2024 and signed more than 100 companies worldwide interested in collaboration, according to the startup.

“We have a very in -depth analysis after making our product and, so far, what we have seen is that our final product is at the same level as vegetable oils, with the exception of pesticides – even purer,” TECHCRANCHE told BONTURI.

Then, the company plans to build an installation to produce fat in commercial quantities by 2027, as well as to concede technology to other manufacturers of cosmetics and food. He must also obtain licenses to sell fats as food, country by country, most likely starting with Singapore, which has more open history for alternative food production products.

“Of course, this is a new type to produce food, and we have to go through all permits and analyzes,” said Bonturi.

As such plans are progressing, Bouturi said she hoped to show how “two scientists in this small country could really do something better for the world, but it’s just my personal dream”.

If you want to know more about äio of the company itself – while checking dozens of others, hearing their arguments and listening to speakers invited at four different stages – join us at Disrupt, from October 27 to 29, in San Francisco. Learn more here.