Animal feed production and transportation significantly contribute to the carbon footprint of the agriculture industry, which is intensive in terms of land, water and other resources. Our single-cell protein, Proton™, is developed for the animal feed industry specifically to meet these challenges… Proton™ provides security, transparency and traceability to feed producers, enabling them to build sustainable feeds around locally-produced, GM-free protein…
VP of Commercial & Sales
Deep Branch
In the livestock industry – including animal nutrition – reducing the carbon footprint and ensuring sustainability in production are among the main trends of recent years. However, now a new trend called “self-sufficiency” has been added to these, which has become more apparent with the effects of the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. Researching and introducing new alternatives for protein, one of the main feed raw materials of the animal nutrition industry, is becoming more and more important specifically because of these needs. One of these new alternatives is single-cell proteins.
Based in the UK and the Netherlands, Deep Branch has recently introduced the single-cell protein it has developed under the brand of Proton™ to the animal nutrition industry. “Proton™ is a dry, protein-rich ingredient for high-performance animal diets produced from microbes cultivated on clean and sustainable carbon dioxide,” explains John Hays, the company’s Vice President of Commercial & Sales.
Hays says this new single-cell alternative protein will make a significant contribution to reducing the carbon footprint. The company, which currently conducts trial production and continues the installation of the pilot plant, aims to establish a facility that will produce between 100,000 and 150,000 metric tons of Proton™ per year. We asked John Hays more details about Proton™.
Mr. Hays, why do you think alternative proteins are important for animal nutrition industry? Why does Deep Branch invest in this field?
Global demand for animal products is expected to double by 2050, but we’re already struggling to farm sustainably. Animal feed production and transportation also significantly contribute to the carbon footprint of the agriculture industry, which is intensive in terms of land, water and other resources. Our single-cell protein, Proton™, is developed for the animal feed industry specifically to meet these challenges.
Proton™ provides security, transparency and traceability to feed producers, enabling them to build sustainable feeds around locally-produced, GM-free protein. Additionally, Proton™ is produced from locally sourced ingredients and has no arable land requirements, reducing its carbon intensity by over 60% compared to conventional proteins.
We typically see two main interests from our customers. The first and major one is reducing the carbon footprint of animal products by enabling lower carbon feeds. The second driver is self-sufficiency, an issue that has become more apparent over recent years due to geopolitics and complex supply chains. Customers want better security on their strategic flows, which is why we continue to invest in this field, as we believe our technology can help produce local, nutritious and sustainable protein. We believe investing in this field will significantly impact tackling the climate emergency and reducing the food industry’s impact on biodiversity loss without relying on drastic behavioural changes.
You have recently developed Proton™, a single-cell protein for the feed industry. What is Proton™ and after what kind of work was it developed?
Proton™ is a dry, protein-rich ingredient for high-performance animal diets produced from microbes cultivated on clean and sustainable carbon dioxide.
We create Proton™ by cultivating non-GMO microbes in a controlled fermentation process. As the microbes are naturally occurring, most of the innovation has been developing an efficient and scalable process. We’ve built on the foundations of conventional fermentation processes, such as brewing beer or wine, though instead of using microbes that must be fed sugar, we use microbes that require carbon dioxide and hydrogen to grow. When our microbes grow, they accumulate high concentrations of protein, creating a milk-like broth. This broth is then dried into a powder, and that’s how Proton™ is made.
What do you promise to the animal nutrition industry with Proton™?
Proton™ will help feed producers effectively lower their carbon footprint across the entire value chain. We will build Proton™ production plants near points of consumption, offering a reliable and local supply to end customers.
Our use of clean and sustainable CO2 allows us to deliver a consistent, high-quality and fully traceable product that is available all year round, rather than being dependent on seasonality.
Are there studies on the use of Proton™ in animal feed? If yes, could you give us some information about the results obtained?
We’re slated to run feed trials with the University of Stirling and Nottingham Trent University as part of the end-to-end, value chain-wide REACT-FIRST consortium, a programme supported by grant funding from Innovate UK, the UK’s Innovation Agency. The programme is set up to obtain critical data about the cost, digestibility, nutritional quality and carbon footprint of Proton™ and is the first step towards the ingredient’s commercial development.
Are you currently only making test production or have you started commercial production? I guess you have a production target of 100,000 tons in your facilities, how much can this meet the needs of the feed industry?
We’re currently in the process of commissioning our Pilot Plant at Brightlands Chemelot in the Netherlands. Once live, the facility will be able to produce sufficient volumes of Proton™ for application development, validate key process techno-economic factors at pilot scale and generate datasets required to inform the scale-up design of our planned commercial facilities.
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 Proton™ 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 Proton™ 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 Proton™ created in our Pilot Hall will be used to produce Proton™-based feed with BioMar throughout 2023. Our immediate focus will be to optimise salmon feed using Proton™.
BioMar has launched the Blue IMPACT™ initiative, which incorporates sustainability at the heart of its direction, driving the company’s interest in Proton™. 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 Proton™. By reducing production costs as we scale, Proton™ 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.
