Fermentify joins Planet B.io to make plant-based food taste as good as the original

For many consumers, sustainability alone is not enough to change what ends up on their plate. Taste and texture remain the deciding factors, and too often, plant-based alternatives fail to deliver on both. Delft-based startup Fermentify believes this can be solved with precision fermentation.

Tackling both a food and climate challenge

Fermentify sees two problems worth solving. The first is immediate: many plant-based alternatives simply don't deliver the taste and texture consumers expect. The second is much bigger. "Changing our diet is one of the easiest ways to reduce our environmental impact," David explains. "But people won't switch if the food isn't good enough. If we can remove that barrier, we can make sustainable choices much easier."

Unlike many precision fermentation startups, Fermentify is not a university spin-off. The company was founded by three Delft University of Technology alumni who identified a commercial opportunity themselves. "We looked at the skills we had in biotechnology and fermentation and asked ourselves: what real-world problem can we solve? We saw a clear gap in ingredients that can replace egg yolk, and that's where Fermentify started."

Building from the ground up

The company is still in its early R&D phase and is now transferring its technology to a new production microorganism. Over the coming months, the focus will be on filing its first patents, scaling production and sending product samples to food manufacturers for testing. "Our biggest challenge isn't market demand," David says. "Customers are already telling us they want this. Our challenge is building the technology to produce it at scale."

Fermentify is developing both the microbial production platform and new food applications, creating intellectual property around how these ingredients are produced and used.

Growing inside the Planet B.io ecosystem

For an early-stage company, finding the right environment can make all the difference. According to David, Planet B.io's Flexible Bio Lab offers something unique. "It's one of the few places where an early-stage biotech startup can immediately start working in a fully equipped lab without investing hundreds of thousands of euros in equipment. That lowers the barrier enormously."

Beyond the facilities, it is the ecosystem that convinced the founders. "Delft combines expertise in ingredient development with world-class knowledge of fermentation, scale-up and industrial biotechnology. That's exactly where we need to be. You can ask someone a question you've been struggling with for months, and they solve it in five minutes."

Looking ahead, Fermentify hopes to grow beyond emulsifiers into a broader platform for precision-fermented food ingredients with functionalities such as foaming, gelling and shelf-life enhancement. "We want to build a platform that helps create better animal-free foods across many applications. That's the long-term vision. And Planet B.io is the right place to start making it happen."

Curious to learn more about Fermentify?

Get in touch with Fermentify to explore collaboration opportunities or learn more about their clean-label ingredient.