UK startup raises €8m in funding to convert CO2 into animal feed | Farming

A UK company turning carbon dioxide into protein to be used to feed animals has raised €8m (£6.8m) in funding as it seeks to displace the use of deforestation-linked soy by farmers.

Carbon and hydrogen is fed to a microorganism in a fermentation process similar to what you would see in a brewery. But rather than alcohol, the output is a high-value protein that can be dried and converted into pellets to feed animals.

Existing sources of protein such as soy and fishmeal have long proved to be the achilles heel of farmers needing feed for their animals. Soy is linked to deforestation in regions such as the Amazon, and fishmeal requires large quantities of wild caught fish to produce.

In contrast, the protein created by startup Deep Branch will rely on recycling carbon from industrial emitters. The waste gas will first need to go through a chemical purification process to strip out the carbon dioxide from other gases before it can be used to produce protein.

“There are big sustainability drawbacks from the proteins we currently use to produce animal products like salmon fillets and chicken drumsticks,” said Deep Branch’s co-founder, Peter Rowe, “but we can produce a high-quality protein without requiring any arable land or fish”.

Rowe said animal producers faced increased competition for feedstocks such as soy and fishmeal and that Deep Branch’s protein, which is being produced in Europe, offered a more secure feed source less affected by geopolitics, seasonality or climate.

Insects have also been touted as a sustainable protein-rich alternative to soy and fishmeal, but Rowe said his firm’s protein would be easier to scale up and produce at a lower cost, if it can locate next to industrial plants capturing carbon. The company will start commercial trials of its feed on chickens and salmon by the summer.

“It won’t all be plain sailing from here though,” said Mike Allen, a professor in environmental sciences at the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. “I imagine they will face significant challenges with scaling up their process, and they’ll still need to blend their product with other types of biomasses to provide the full nutrient profile required for healthy animal growth.”

The startup has already attracted support from leading animal feed companies in Europe, BioMar and AB Agri, and is close to agreeing to build its first commercial production facility in Norway, where it hopes to supply the country’s aquaculture sector. Norway is the world’s leading salmon exporter and has a number of carbon capture and storage projects in development.

However, Allen said the company should not be seen as a climate-saving project. “Any process that utilises industrial CO2 emissions is great in theory, but they’ll have to be honest and realistic about how much CO2 they are actually remediating, and what their overall carbon footprint is.

“Most of the CO2 run through their bioreactors will pass straight through, I imagine. And the hydrogen will come with a carbon footprint too. This isn’t a carbon capture technology despite how it may be branded, it’s a protein production platform,” he said.

While global demand for meat remained high, Rowe said Deep Branch’s protein feed was a more sustainable solution to soy or fishmeal.

“Yes, reducing meat consumption also reduces our impact on the environment, but not everyone sees it that way so if we can reduce the impact of animal protein production then that’s only a good thing,” he said.

WWF said it welcomed attempts to reduce the increasing use of soy. “These bacterial processes using excess materials like carbon dioxide and agricultural byproducts are a good thing as they don’t, like soy, cause deforestation, biodiversity loss and don’t need freshwater or fertiliser,” said the charity’s aquaculture lead, Piers Harts.

“We shouldn’t be using precious land and freshwater to grow crops for feed when it could be used to grow crops for food so we shouldn’t be using soy and maize to feed animals.

“Whether they [alternative proteins] will completely displace soy will come down to cost in the end. We hope that increasing demand and scaling production will bring the price down and also that people will say that yes, it may be slightly more expensive, but it’s that much better for the planet that we will use it,” said Hart.