Zymofix Plans €6m Belgian Plant to Scale Solid-State Fermentation Based Agriculture Inputs
Belgian contract manufacturer Zymofix will build its first industrial production site in Deinze, a €6 million facility funded partly by a Series A round led by First Imagine!
The plant will use the company's Zyft platform, which grows microorganisms on solid substrates and targets strains that perform poorly in conventional liquid fermentation.
Production is due to start in Q4 2027 at 300 tonnes a year, with a possible expansion to 2,000 tonnes, testing whether solid-state fermentation can supply agricultural-input customers at industrial volumes.
Zymofix, a Belgian manufacturer of microorganisms, will open its first industrial production site in Deinze, Belgium, after customer demand outgrew what its pilot operations can supply. According to Cultivated X, the €6 million facility is funded partly by a Series A round led by First Imagine! and partly by revenue from the company's existing customer programmes. The plant is meant to take solid-state fermentation, which grows microorganisms on solid materials rather than in liquid, to industrial volumes.
A Young Company With Returning Backers
Zymofix was founded in 2022 and was formerly known as N-Fix. Existing investors VP Capital, HTGF and The Nest Family Office joined the Series A. The same three backed its €2 million seed round in November 2024. Earlier this year, EIT Food named the company to its 2026 RisingFoodStars cohort.
Why Solid-State Fermentation Is Hard to Scale
Co-founder and CEO Emile Redant argues that finding a promising microorganism is only part of the challenge. The harder part, he says, is manufacturing it consistently and efficiently at the volumes the market requires. He describes solid-state fermentation as having significant potential but as historically difficult to scale. Zymofix spent four years developing its Zyft platform to address that, and the company says it has validated the platform at pilot scale. The Deinze plant is the next step.
Zyft grows living microorganisms on solid substrates and is designed for strains that perform poorly in conventional liquid fermentation. More than 170 strains of bacteria, fungi and yeasts have been tested on it to date. For wider context on the method, see this look at why solid-state fermentation is gaining ground in biotech.
A Two-Phase Capacity Plan
Zymofix will begin relocating operations to Deinze over the coming months, with production scheduled to start in Q4 2027. The first line will have an annual capacity of 300 tonnes, which the company says is enough product to treat approximately 1 million hectares.
A second phase, budgeted at €25 million and planned for 2028, depends on the first line being commissioned successfully. It would raise capacity to 2,000 tonnes a year, which the company says would cover around 10 million hectares.
Headcount is expected to grow alongside the plan. Zymofix currently employs around 35 people and expects to reach approximately 45 by the end of 2026 and 60 by the end of 2027.
Contract Manufacturing for Agri-Input Multinationals
Zymofix does not develop its own strains. It manufactures microorganisms for more than 15 customers, most of them multinational agricultural-input companies. It supports them through process development, fermentation, formulation and scale-up. Current programmes cover biostimulants, biofertilisers and biocontrol products, with further work in bioremediation and other industrial uses.
That positioning echoes a recurring theme in the sector: a promising organism is of little commercial use without a reliable way to produce it. Boris Dorin, Partner at First Imagine!, made the point directly. He said microbial products reach the market only if someone can manufacture them reliably, at industrial volumes and at a price the market will pay, and that manufacturing is where Europe is thinnest. In his view, Zymofix has turned solid-state fermentation from a laboratory technique into a validated platform on which industrial customers already depend. He added that First Imagine! intends to remain invested well beyond the opening of a first plant.
Readers following the wider scale-up challenge may also find it useful to read about how Evologic approaches the scale problem and the food safety decisions that shape fermentation scale-up.
Open Questions and the Road Ahead
Several caveats apply. Zyft has been validated at pilot scale, not industrial scale, so performance at 300 tonnes a year remains to be demonstrated, and production is not due to begin until Q4 2027. The hectare coverage figures are the company's own estimates, and the source does not explain how they were calculated.
The announcement also leaves some commercial details open. It does not disclose the size of the Series A round, how the €6 million is split between investor capital and customer revenue, or the production costs per tonne. The €25 million second phase is contingent on successful commissioning of the first line, so the path to 2,000 tonnes is not guaranteed.
What the announcement does show is customer pull: demand from more than 15 customers is what exceeded pilot capacity. Whether solid-state fermentation can hold its economics at industrial scale will become clearer once the Deinze line is running.
