The €20m (£17m) Biotech Open Platform has commenced operation at its new facility in France, with its first advanced fermentation projects now underway.
Located in the Sustainable Materials Centre, within the Michelin Innovation Park – Cataroux in Clermont-Ferrand, the platform will support start-ups, industrial companies and R&D organisations in developing, optimising, scaling up and validating fermentation-based processes.
The intention is to ensure more innovations make it from laboratory scale to conditions representative of industrial production.
Bridging the gap between lab and factory
To achieve that, the facility offers integrated fermentation, purification and bioprocess development capabilities, including a complete fermentation line with a capacity of up to 15m³ and semi-industrial purification systems — facilities that are still rare in Europe.
These capabilities meet the most stringent standards, particularly those applicable to food production.
Beyond technical process validation, the platform enables the production of sufficient volumes to conduct application testing and support the validation stages preceding potential commercial production.
Florent Menegaux, Chairman of the Michelin Group, says:
"With the inauguration of Biotech Open Platform, we are turning a strong conviction into an industrial reality: biotechnology will play a major role in the sustainable transformation of many sectors.
"By providing companies with an open infrastructure and leading expertise, we want to accelerate the transition from research to industry. For Michelin, this is an opportunity to explore new ways of replacing certain molecules currently derived from petrochemicals with more sustainable, bio-based alternatives. More broadly, this platform aims to become a catalyst for innovation in support of European competitiveness."
A catalyst for new industrial applications
As the availability and sustainability of certain fossil-based ingredients and resources come under increasing scrutiny, industrial biotechnology and advanced fermentation processes are opening new opportunities to produce molecules, ingredients and materials from renewable resources.
Advanced fermentation, of which precision fermentation is one of the main technology approaches, uses microorganisms such as yeasts, bacteria, microalgae and fungi as "microfactories" capable of producing molecules of interest to industry.
These technologies can produce proteins, enzymes, food ingredients, cosmetic actives and bio-based materials for sectors as diverse as food and beverages, cosmetics, agriculture, chemicals and biomaterials.
An open platform born from a six-way partnership
Biotech Open Platform was announced in 2024 and born from a joint initiative by Danone, Michelin, DMC Biotechnologies, Crédit Agricole Centre France, Clermont Auvergne Innovation and Greentech to jointly create an open industrial platform.
With dedicated teams and its own infrastructure, Biotech Open Platform guarantees strict project confidentiality and protection of intellectual property.
The project also benefits from the support of Clermont Auvergne Métropole and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund, which have supported the creation of this strategic infrastructure for biotechnology development.
Khadidja Romari, Chief Executive Officer of Biotech Open Platform, says:
"Biotech Open Platform was created to address a very concrete challenge in biotechnology: how to move from a promising process at laboratory scale to a robust process that can work at industrial scale.
"The infrastructure is important, but equipment alone is not enough. Scale-up requires experience, technical know-how and the ability to solve the issues that appear as the process moves from one scale to another. Confidentiality and protection of intellectual property are also essential for the companies we work with. Our role is to help them move faster and more securely towards industrialisation."
