Äio (pronunciation eye-oh) is the Estonian deity of dreams. It seems to be a sweet suitable name for a growing startup, called äio, from the small Baltic country that has developed the process of replacing agricultural waste in fat for food and cosmetic industries.
This process can be a way to reduce the world’s dependence on palm oil, which has become a head for food and cosmetics for its emulsion and preservative properties. Unfortunately, due to the need for that plant’s warm humid climate, this vast industry has also noticed rain forests and other sensitive ecosystems to make way for the fields.
Based on Boturi’s doctoral research, biotechnology scientists were co-established by Nemila Bonturi and Petra-Jana Laheve. During his studies, he invented a new microbe, yeast tension. Instead of producing sugar and carbon dioxide gas or alcohol with bread and beer, it consumes yeast sugar and outputs fat molecules. The company will show its technology as part of the Startup Batalfield in this year’s Techchunch Distribe, which runs in San Francisco later this month.
Laheve was a professor of food tech and bio -engineering at Telin University of Technology in Estonia and in 2016, he took his own biotech lab with Bonturi. She brought her microbe with her, and she worked on the molecule, which was replaced, which was enough to be built.
Since Estonia has a large agricultural base of corn and other food grains, as well as sugarcane and wood, the lab studied how sugars produced by those AG waste currents can feed this microbe. “We started working on it, developing metabolic engineering equipment,” Lheve told Techcrunch. Answer: It can consume those sugars quite well.
The molecule of the molecule “the fat profile is similar to the existing fat,” Laheve says, and, in its solid fat, perhaps “the closest looks like chicken fat.” But it is also possible to modify the fermentation process to produce liquid oil and at the same time it can make a good choice for manufactured oils such as canola/rapeseed oil.
In 2022, founders knew that they had a commercially viable solution and launched äio with the hope of setting up commercial participation to raise the enterprise money and bring it to the market. He has said that he has so far raised around 7 million dollars and since the founder has created ways to develop accurate fermentation products, has won 2024 Baltic Sustainability Awards, and has signed more than 100 companies worldwide, calling startups.
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“We have a very comprehensive analysis after creating our product and so far, what we have seen is that our final product is at the same level of vegetable oil, except pesticides – even more pure,” Bonturi told Techcrunch.
Subsequently, the company planned to create a facility to produce commercial quantity by 2027, as well as license to other cosmetic and food manufacturers. It should also obtain a license to sell fat as food, the country is likely to start with the country, Singapore, with the history of being more open for alternative food production products.
“Of course, this is a novel type of food production, and we have to undergo all permits and analysis,” Bonturi said.
As the progress of such schemes, Bonturi said that she hopes to show that “two scientists in this small country can actually do something better for the world, but it is just my personal dream.”
If you want to know more about äio from the company itself – while dozens of other people also examine their pitches, and listen to guest speakers in four different stages – let us join the disintegration in San Francisco from 27 to 29 October. Learn more here.
