ISSUE FOCUS 40 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE October 2022 Simultaneously, we’re scaling the technology needed for our next facility along our commercial journey. We’re aiming for a commercial facility to produce between 100,000 - 150,000mt of product per annum. We believe the animal feed market will be large enough to absorb these volumes and more. You have partnered with Landsvirkjun to speed up the production. How will this contribute to the amount of production? We’re collaborating with Landsvirkjun on a life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis to assess the feasibility of building our first commercial facility to scale the production of ProtonTM in Iceland. Our single commercial module will have market-relevant offtake volumes and a production capacity of 7.5kt per annum. It is obvious that the costs related to feed ingredients create an intense pressure on feed producers. Do you think Proton™ can be an economical and sustainable protein source for feed industry in the future? Yes, definitely. We expect to meet the sustainability challenge and the scale hurdle required for commercial adoption. Of course, the economics will need time as our capacity is brought online, but that will be within a reasonable timeframe for any technology building to scale. Nevertheless, we believe ProtonTM will be able to compete with traditional products with only a modest adjustment for sustainability savings. You have recently partnered with BioMar for feeds of the aquaculture industry. What is the scope and objective of this partnership? What is the current focus and situation of your collaboration? The ProtonTM created in our Pilot Hall will be used to produce ProtonTM-based feed with BioMar throughout 2023. Our immediate focus will be to optimise salmon feed using ProtonTM. BioMar has launched the Blue IMPACT™ initiative, which incorporates sustainability at the heart of its direction, driving the company’s interest in ProtonTM. Together with BioMar, we’ll conduct a full suite of nutritional assessments in Denmark, Norway and the UK to test the protein-rich ingredient. These tests will focus on performance, digestibility and other parameters essential for fish health and growth. Anything else you want to add… We recently secured £4.8 million in funding from the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to scale our fermentation platform. The project, Deep Blue C, will enable us to reduce the cost of design optimisations, lower capital expenditure and the cost of goods sold for our core fermentation process and improve downstream processing. Deep Blue C will result in a significant increase in the production efficiencies of ProtonTM. By reducing production costs as we scale, ProtonTM will ensure a substantial saving in carbon footprint for feed producers that switch from concentrated soybean meal or fishmeal without an unjustifiable price premium. About John Hays John has more than 10 years of experience in finance and business development within the food and agriculture industries. Before joining Deep Branch, he was Head of Business Development at Cefetra Group, while he also acted as a Project Manager in BayWa AG’s Corporate Finance team for over three years. John has a strong track record of devising and executing strategies for bringing ingredients to market, including go-to-market plans, partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions. As VP of Commercial & Sales at Deep Branch, John is using his experience to shape the commercialisation strategy for Proton™, a single-cell protein developed by the company for the feed industry.
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