GEA has opened its New Food Application and Technology Centre of Excellence (ATC) in Germany, as a hub for piloting processes and products for the alternative protein industry.
At the new centre, located in the German city of Hildesheim, GEA’s team will use a cell cultivation and fermentation pilot line to fast-track innovations from the lab to commercial-scale manufacturing. It aims to bridge the gap between the test bench and industrial-scale production without customers having to invest in a large-scale plant from the outset.
A key research focus for the facility is precision fermentation for milk proteins. One of GEA’s first customers in this field is Imagindairy, a scale-up from Israel.
Speaking at the opening event, the company’s CEO Eyal Afergan said Imagindairy wants to make dairy products “without harming the planet.”
Afergan said: “To make that happen, we harness the ancient art of fermentation and combine it with science. This lets us create milk proteins with the taste, functionality, mouthfeel and nutritional value that we love about milk.
“Together with GEA, we can pave the way to bringing this innovation faster to the market, with the highest possible quality standards”.
Heinz Jürgen Kroner, senior VP of New Food at GEA said that establishing and scaling up a new food production facility is a “major task.” He added: “In many cases, new food producers are still stuck at the lab scale – with the hygiene, aseptic and process requirements that involves. On the other hand, industrial-scale manufacturing presents much greater technical and financial challenges.”
New food has been identified as one of the growth drivers in GEA’s Mission 26 strategy. A dedicated New Food business unit has been furthering the development of cell-based protein synthesis since 2022.
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