Tetra Pak and Swan Neck Bio partnership simplifies food scaling

Tetra Pak and Swan Neck Bio, a biotechnology firm based in Denmark, have launched a new partnership aimed at streamlining and increasing scaling options for businesses creating food products generated from biomass or precise fermentation.

By enabling companies to use seed as an ingredient, the partnership expands Tetra Pak’s product line and provides a turnkey solution for commercial fermentation processes both inside and outside of the new food industry.

With this collaboration, producers developing food through fermentation have access to Swan Neck Bio’s DIRINOC technology, a storable, concentrated, viable and quality-certified starter culture for direct inoculation that supports growth of a producer’s organism without the need to propagate their own cultures.

Using DIRINOC can reduce contamination risk and provides predictability in output, the parties said. With many food producers failing to produce at scale due to contamination or variable yield that differs from expectations, DIRINOC offers a low-risk solution that is expected to reduce waste, lowers total cost of ownership for equipment solutions, and increases profitability.

DIRINOC is also incorporated into Tetra Pak’s process development ecosystem, so producers can outsource the seed train if they prefer to avoid a multi-stage bioreactor process. This makes it possible for new food producers to begin trials without the resource intensity of propagating cultures on site.

DIRINOC will be available alongside existing seed train and equipment solutions, which customers are already exploring at pilot-scale at the Tetra Pak New Food Technology Development Centre, recently opened in Karlshamn, Sweden.

This new collaboration offers additional solutions to the barrier that seed preparation can create for commercial-scale production. DIRINOC negates the commitment of time and investment to design the base ingredient, or seed, and removes the risk of failure at this stage of the process. Additionally, the flexibility offered by DIRINOC at pilot scale enables trial and iteration to determine an optimum equipment setup before committing to the full capital outlay of a new production line.

Rafael Barros, director new food at Tetra Pak, noted how speed, risk management, and flexibility are critical for new food producers.

The collaboration with Swan Neck Bio unlocks new efficiencies in fermentation by removing one of the key barriers to scale: seed preparation, he said, adding: “This gives producers more time to focus on process optimisation, product quality and, ultimately, getting to market faster.”

Troels Prahl, co-founder and CEO at Swan Neck Bio, said: “This collaboration reinforces our commitment to supporting the growth of sustainable food innovation. By combining Swan Neck Bio’s pioneering inoculum capabilities with Tetra Pak’s industrial engineering and food manufacturing expertise, we are helping customers de-risk development, reduce time to market and manufacture at scale with confidence.”