EvodiaBio Raises $6.4 Million for Its Precision Fermentation Aromas for Beer

Danish aroma company EvodiaBio has secured $6.4 million (45 million Danish kroner) for its sustainable aroma production for food and beverages.

The new funding for the 18-month-old EvodiaBio builds on an earlier $1.3 million raise with support from the BioInnovation Institute, a Danish accelerator funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the German flavor house Symrise, and Food tech VC from Finland, which led the latest round.

Sustainable aroma production

“Our vision is to create a sustainable, global company within the development, production, and commercialization of natural aromatic substances and this funding is our opportunity to realize this vision,” EvodiaBio co-founder and chairman Jarne Elleholm, said in a statement.

“We are very enthusiastic about this collaboration and ready to support the company on this exciting journey,” said Nick Russell, SVP Business Incubation Group at Symrise. “We share with EvodiaBio the same vision for a greener future and believe that the precision fermentation technology developed by the team will greatly contribute to a more sustainable flavor and fragrance industry, starting with non-alcoholic beer applications and with the potential to go much further.”

Founder and partner of Nordic Foodtech VC, Lauri Reuter, says EvodiaBio has discovered “an elegant solution to a difficult bottleneck in sustainable aroma compounds.

“A better food system is not only about securing essential nutrition, but also providing the aroma and sensory experiences we love – without depleting scarce resources,” Reuter said.

Precision fermentation

In what it’s calling a groundbreaking technology platform, EvodiaBio is using precision fermentation to create aromas that are more sustainable than conventional. The tech is being used by a growing number of companies, including Nestlé, the world’s largest food manufacturer. It just launched a range of ready-to-drink milk products made from precision fermentation whey.

It’s working first in beer, but plans to create aromas for food and fragrance products. The monoterpenoid aromas for beer are produced using yeast cells that secrete aroma components that can mimic the aroma profiles of different types of hops.

The tech is the brainchild of co-founders, Prof. Sotirios Kampranis, Dr. Simon Dusséaux, and Dr. Victor Forman along with Elleholm. They say what they’ve achieved is a food industry first: cost-effective and sustainable biotechnological production of volatile aroma molecules in hops. EvodiaBio says its tech solution reduces water and CO₂ emissions by more than 90 percent.

EvodiaBio is targeting non-alcoholic beer first with its proprietary aroma it calls Yops, which it says can improve the taste of non-alcoholic beer as well as serve as a sustainable alternative to cultivated aroma hops.

Recently appointed board member of EvodiaBio, Flemming Besenbacher, former chairman of Carlsberg and the Carlsberg Foundation, says he sees huge opportunities. “EvodiaBio is a very promising project that solves an industry challenge, which I excitedly have been involved in solving, and I look forward to being part of the further developments, we are beginning now.”