‘One-Stop Shop’: Cremer Group Unveils New Brand to Power Up Next-Gen Fermentation Solutions
German agrifood giant Cremer Group has launched FermBase, a “competence centre and one-stop shop” for fermentation feedstock and media formulations to address key biotech challenges.
Cremer Group is hoping to usher in the next era of fermentation more quickly with a new marketplace aimed at startups, scale-ups, and established operators alike.
The Hamburg-based enterprise has unveiled FermBase, which looks to tackle the sourcing, scaling and cost challenges facing companies working on next-generation and precision fermentation.
Cremer Group describes the brand as a “competence centre and one-stop shop” for fermentation media, serving applications in the food, feed, cosmetics, and industrial sectors.
FermBase connects innovators in traditional, biomass and precision fermentation with the carbon and nitrogen sources, minerals, and premixes they need to scale up.
FermBase ‘accelerates innovation and reduces complexity’
Cremer Group argues that the modern fermentation industry suffers from complex sourcing requirements, fragmented feedstock markets, high raw material (and, consequently, process) costs, and limited scalability across the supply chain.
FermBase combines reliable feedstock access and procurement with globally scalable, resilient supply chains. This, the company says, enables its clients to focus on research and growth while Cremer manages the operational complexities of the supply chain, from pilot scale through to industrial production.
“Our portfolio provides a unique starting point to support fermentation companies in establishing stable international supply chains,” said Christian Flach, CEO of Peter Cremer Holding. “With FermBase, we are creating an infrastructure that accelerates innovation and reduces complexity.”
FermBase acts as a “central competence centre” for Cremer Group, with an interdisciplinary team connecting the firm’s strengths in insourcing, production and global supply chain management with application-focused know-how for novel fermentation.
The goal is to provide fermentation players with practical, economically viable and scalable solutions. Fermbase gives companies global access to molasses, glycerol, agricultural sidestreams, minerals, ammonium salts, corn steep liquor, pre-mixes, and media. It also offers integrated procurement and logistics across regions to help derisk the supply chain.
Initial projects already underway with FermBase
Cremer Group has long been involved in planet-friendly nutrition and plant-based solutions. Its Cremer Sustainable Foods division, for instance, operates a 1,000 sq m facility for alternative proteins, which can produce 1,300 tonnes of product per year.
The German agrifood giant has many years of experience in global raw material trading. When combined with its global access to feedstocks, logistics capabilities and extensive processing capacities, this expertise forms the foundation for FermBase.
It aims to make it “significantly easier” for fermentation innovators to source suitable feedstocks and nutrients, and create more efficient supply chains. The platform focuses on novel fermentation technologies that are used to develop functional ingredients such as proteins, fats, enzymes, and more.
FermBase supports companies from pilot scale (with 100-litre bioreactors) to full industrial production (100,000-litre-plus fermenters). It designs feedstock and media supply strategies to fit individual cost and growth targets, as well as supports media reformulation, volume planning, and supplier coordination when scaling up from lab recipes to pilot and industrial formulations.
Cremer Group has already launched initial projects in alternative proteins, precision fermentation and industrial biotechnology, and it will now continue to develop its offering by incorporating new feedstock opportunities, digital solutions and technological approaches into the optimisation of fermentation media and supply chains.
“Fermentation is one of humankind’s oldest technologies – and at the same time, one of the most exciting technologies of the future,” said Flach. “With FermBase, we are building on our long-standing expertise in global raw material trading.”