The Protein Brewery Raises €18M to Scale Fermotein Mycoprotein Across Europe and Beyond
- Gauri Khanna
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Dutch food tech company The Protein Brewery has closed an €18M Series B extension, bringing its total funding to over €70M, days after securing the first EU novel food
of complete protein per 100g alongside 30g of fibre and naturally occurring spermidine, a polyamine linked in human studies to cellular maintenance pathways including autophagy.
The funding will accelerate EU market entry, expand manufacturing capacity to over 2,000 tonnes by 2029, and support clinical research into Fermotein's longevity-promoting properties.
A Novel Food Approval and a Fresh Round of Capital
Timing matters in food tech, and The Protein Brewery has moved quickly. Within days of the European Commission amending its implementing regulation to include Fermotein on the EU's list of authorised novel foods, the Breda-based startup announced an €18M ($20.5M) extension of its Series B round. That brings the Dutch company's total capital raised to more than €70M (nearly $80M).
The extension was led by ABN AMRO's Sustainable Impact Fund, a first-time investor in the company, and supported by existing backers including Invest-NL, Novo Holdings (the investment arm of Novo Nordisk's parent company), Madeli, and the Brabant Development Agency. The combination of a national development bank, a sovereign-adjacent life sciences investor, and a regional agency signals that Fermotein is being treated as critical infrastructure for European alternative protein, not merely a niche ingredient play.
The Protein Brewery was formed in 2020 as a demerger from industrial biotech company BioscienZ BV. Its core innovation is Fermotein, a whole-cell mycoprotein produced by fermenting Rhizomucor pusillus, a fungal strain capable of tolerating low pH levels and high temperatures, making it well-suited to industrial fermentation conditions. The organism is fed on glucose in fermentation tanks; the resulting biomass is pasteurized, dried, and milled into a powder.
What Fermotein Contains and Why Investors Are Paying Attention
The ingredient's nutritional profile is its primary commercial argument. Fermotein contains 50g of complete protein per 100g, with a Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS) of 1, the highest possible rating, alongside 30g of dietary fibre and just 6g of fat. By comparison, the company reports that Fermotein yields 26 times more protein per unit than meat, five times more than soy, and four times more than peas.
Its environmental credentials are also notable. Relative to beef, Fermotein is reported to use 1% of the land, 5% of the water, and generate 3% of the greenhouse gas emissions, though these figures come from The Protein Brewery's own reporting rather than independent lifecycle assessments.
Beyond the macronutrient profile, Fermotein contains naturally occurring spermidine, a polyamine compound increasingly studied for its potential role in anti-ageing. Human studies and mechanistic research have associated spermidine with autophagy, the cellular housekeeping process by which cells clear out damaged components. The Protein Brewery intends to direct a portion of the new funding toward clinical and scientific research into these longevity-adjacent properties, though that work remains ongoing and no clinical claims have been established for Fermotein specifically.
The startup has also been exploring Fermotein's potential as a complement to GLP-1 receptor agonist medications such as semaglutide, citing its high protein and fibre content as supportive of satiety and muscle maintenance in users of those drugs.
Production Scale, Market Targets, and the Road Ahead
The Breda production facility is expected to supply 600 tones of Fermotein in 2027, with confirmed customer commitments across Europe, Singapore, and the United States, the three markets in which it has already received regulatory clearance. The company reports that its 2026 production capacity is already sold out. New funds will be directed toward expanding fermentation capacity and downstream processing, with a target of more than 2,000 tonnes annually by 2029.
Regulatory filings are underway in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The initial commercial focus in Europe will be active nutrition, primarily protein powders and bars, with the first EU customer launches anticipated in the fourth quarter of 2026.
The broader mycoprotein sector continues to attract significant regulatory and commercial momentum, and The Protein Brewery now holds an unusually strong position: EU approval secured, capacity sold forward, and a growing body of scientific evidence behind its ingredient. What remains to be established is whether clinical research will substantiate the longevity and GLP-1 complementarity claims that are central to its premium market positioning.