Startup Battlefield äio invented a way to manufacture eating fat from agricultural waste such as sawdust

Äio (pronounced Eye-oh) is the god of Astony dreams. This name looks perfectly suitable for an emerging emerging company called äio, from the small Baltic state that has developed a process of converting agricultural waste such as sawdust into fats used in food industries and cosmetics.

This process can be a way to reduce the world’s dependence on palm oil, which has become an essential element in food and cosmetics due to its alleviation and preservative properties. Unfortunately, due to the need of this plant to hot and humid climates, this huge industry has also destroyed rainforests and other sensitive environmental systems to make way for farms.

Äio The Nemailla Bonturi and Petri-Jaan Lahtvee were founded on its PhD research. 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 techniques as part of The emerging battlefield This year Disable Tech CrankAnd that will be held later this month in San Francisco.

Lahafa was a professor of food and biomedical technology at Tallinn Technology University in Estonia, and in 2016, he was running his own biotechnology laboratory there with Bontore, his first employee. She brought the microbe with her, worked on the molecule, and modified it to become strong enough to manufacture it.

Since Estonia has a large agricultural base of corn and other nutritional grains, as well as sugar cane and wood, the laboratory has studied how sugars produced from agricultural waste streams feed this microbe. “We have started working on it and developing metabolic engineering tools,” Lahafi told Techcrunch. Answer: It can consume these sugars well.

“The fatty shape of the molecule is very similar to the existing fats”, and in its solid fatty shape, perhaps “it is very similar to chicken fat.” But it is also possible to adjust the fermentation process to produce liquid oil as well, which may make it a good alternative to manufactured oils such as canola oil/turnip seed oil.

In 2022, the founders realized that they had a commercially applied solution and launched äio in the hope of collecting project funds and establishing commercial partnerships to put it on the market. They have collected about $ 7 million so far, and since their founding, they have created ways to develop precise fermentation products, won the Baltic Sustainability Award for 2024, and signed with more than 100 companies around the world interested in cooperation, the startup says.

“We have conducted a very intense analysis after we make our product, and what we have seen so far is that our final product is the same as the level of vegetable oils, with the exception of pesticides – and even more purity,” 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 other cosmetics and food. She must also obtain fat -selling licenses as food, from one country to another, probably from Singapore, which It has a history of being more open To alternative food production products.

“Of course, it is a new way to produce food, and we have to pass through all permits and analyzes,” said Pontory.

As these plans are offered, Pontory said she hoped to show how “two worlds in this small country can do something better for the world, but this is just a personal dream.”

If you want to learn more about äio from the company itself – also check from dozens of other companies, listen to their ideas, listen to guest speakers in four different stages – join us in Disrupt, from 27 to October 29, in San Francisco. Learn more here.