Onego Bio Secures €14M / $15.2M New Funding to Advance Animal-Free Egg Protein Production
HELSINKI, FI, July 17, 2024 – Onego Bio, a leading precision fermentation company, has secured €14M / $15.2M new funding from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator Program and additional Series A investors. In 2024 Onego Bio has successfully raised altogether €50.5M / $55M, bringing the company’s total funding to € 65M / $70.8M.
Manufactured as an industrial food ingredient, Onego’s Bioalbumen® offers bio-identical egg protein with a stable supply, full functionality, perfect protein quality, and neutral flavor, while having the potential to alleviate the environmental burden by ~90 %.
As a US-Finnish company, Onego is moving at full speed in commercializing in North America, where the regulatory landscape allows a faster market entry. The company is on track to submit a Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) notice to the FDA this year, with hope of receiving a "no questions" letter from the FDA in 2025. The newly gained EIC funding will fuel the company’s go-to-market plan also in the EU, including securing regulatory approval from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
Maija Itkonen, the CEO and co-founder of Onego Bio
Maija Itkonen, CEO & co-founder of Onego Bio said: "The new funding and immense support from our investors demonstrates their confidence in our vision and the potential of innovations like Bioalbumen® to build a more sustainable system. It also shows that the EU recognizes precision fermentation as a solution to address sustainability issues and enhance food security in Europe and worldwide. However, to remain competitive and fully capture the potential of exceptional European research and innovation, the regulatory approval process must be accelerated, as the EU currently lags behind other regions in this area."
Onego Bio was selected for EIC funding from a highly competitive pool of 969 applicants, of which 347 companies were interviewed by juries of experienced investors and entrepreneurs, with only the top 68 receiving funding. EIC Accelerator selects only startups or SMEs with a high-impact product, service, or business model that demonstrate the potential to scale-up and create new markets or disrupt existing ones in Europe and even worldwide. In the 2024 work program, EIC identified precision fermentation as an area where breakthrough technologies or game-changing innovations can have a major impact to improve the sustainability, efficiency, and resilience of the European food supply chain through decoupling food production from the soil and minimizing environmental impacts including water pollution.
Founded in 2022 as a spinoff from VTT (Technical Research Center of Finland), Onego is already working with major food companies on product formulation in a wide range of products, from baked goods, confectionery, snacks, sauces, pasta, meat alternatives, and more. With commercial operations in San Diego, California, the company is currently producing Bioalbumen® with co-manufacturers while finalizing plans for its first own manufacturing unit. Onego employs a patented fungal fermentation technology that is highly productive and scalable, demonstrating industrial production potential and enabling competitive pricing compared to conventional egg production methods. A single Onego full-scale manufacturing unit will boast a two-million-liter fermentation capacity, effectively delivering the protein equivalent produced by six million laying hens.
For more information:
Laura Eriksson
Head of Brand & Communications
Onego Bio Ltd
laura@onego.bio
About Onego Bio
Onego Bio is a US-Finnish food-biotech company revolutionizing the food system by harnessing the power of precision fermentation to manufacture real egg protein entirely animal-free. Their ingredient, Bioalbumen®, sets a new standard for sustainable protein with identical taste and nutrition, superior functional properties and over 90% smaller environmental footprint compared to eggs from chickens. Onego’s highly productive and scalable technology caters to the needs of the food industry searching for stable, sustainable functional ingredients. As a game-changer in the field, the company was selected the Winner of Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas awards and is a co-founder of two industry associations: Precision Fermentation Alliance and Food Fermentation Europe.
Learn more at www.onego.bio.
About EIC fund
The EIC Accelerator offers start-ups and SMEs grants of up to €2.5 million combined with equity investments through the EIC Fund ranging from €0.5 to €15 million or more. In addition to financial support, all projects benefit from a wide range of Business Acceleration Services that provide access to leading expertise, corporates, investors and ecosystem actors. In the latest funding round, the selected companies will receive together an estimated €411 million in funding, of which up to €165 million in grants and an estimated €245 million in equity. Companies can submit their ideas to the EIC Accelerator at any time, which are then evaluated within 6- 8 weeks. So far over twelve thousand start-ups have submitted ideas since the EIC launch in 2021. For ideas meeting the EIC criteria for excellence, impact and risk-level, companies are invited to prepare full applications to submit to one of the regular cut-off dates. The next cut-off for EIC Accelerator full proposals, as announced in the EIC 2024 work program, is scheduled for 3 October 2024.