• Press release
3 min time reading

Biotech Open Platform inaugurates its biotechnology platform, opening a new chapter for industrial innovation in Europe

  • Corporate news
  • Two years after its creation by Danone, Michelin, DMC Biotechnologies, Crédit Agricole Centre France, Clermont Auvergne Innovation and Greentech, Biotech Open Platform inaugurates its industrial biotechnology platform and welcomes its first advanced fermentation projects.
  • With more than €20 million invested in its first phase and fermentation capacities of up to 15 m³, the platform addresses a key biotechnology challenge: bridging the gap between laboratory development and industrial-scale production.
  • Open to start-ups, industrial companies and R&D organizations, Biotech Open Platform supports the scale-up of biotechnology innovations and contributes to strengthening European industrial competitiveness. 

A strategic bridge from the laboratory to industrial-scale production

Every year, numerous biotechnology innovations demonstrate promising results in the laboratory. Yet many of them never progress beyond that stage. Between proof of concept and industrial deployment lies a critical step: scale-up. Biotech Open Platform was created specifically to address this challenge. 

Two years after its creation, Biotech Open Platform today inaugurates its biotechnology platform at the Sustainable Materials Center, located within Michelin’s Innovation Park - Cataroux in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Representing an investment of more than €20 million in its first phase, this infrastructure marks the transition from a project announced in 2024 to a fully operational industrial facility welcoming its first projects. 

The platform supports start-ups, industrial companies and R&D organizations in developing, optimizing, scaling up and validating fermentation-based processes, from laboratory scale to conditions representative of industrial production. To achieve this, the platform offers integrated fermentation, purification and bioprocess development capabilities, including a complete fermentation line with a capacity of up to 15 m³ and semi-industrial purification systems; facilities that remain rare in Europe. All of these capabilities meet the most stringent standards, particularly those applicable to food production. 

Beyond technical process validation, the platform enables the production of sufficient volumes to conduct application testing and support the validation stages prior to commercial production.

A catalyst for the development of new industrial applications

As the availability and sustainability of certain fossil-based ingredients and resources come under increasing scrutiny, industrial biotechnology and advanced fermentation processes are opening up new opportunities to produce molecules, ingredients and materials from renewable resources.

Advanced fermentation, of which precision fermentation is one of the main technology approaches, uses microorganisms such as yeasts, bacteria, microalgae and fungi as true “micro factories” capable of producing molecules of interest to industry. These technologies can produce proteins, enzymes, food ingredients, cosmetic actives and bio-based materials for sectors as diverse as food and beverages, cosmetics, agriculture, chemicals and biomaterials.

Biotech Open Platform is designed to support a broad range of companies facing the same industrial scale-up challenges, well beyond its founding companies. This openness is one of the project’s founding principles. 

A unique collaborative model supporting European industrial competitiveness

Biotech Open Platform is built on a strong conviction: major scientific, industrial and environmental challenges require new forms of collaboration.

Biotech Open Platform was born from a joint initiative by Danone, Michelin, DMC Biotechnologies, Crédit Agricole Centre France, Clermont Auvergne Innovation and Greentech to jointly create an open industrial platform. With its own dedicated teams and infrastructure, Biotech Open Platform ensures strict project confidentiality and the protection of intellectual property. The project has also benefited from the support of the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), managed by the Auvergne-Rhône Alpes Region, as well as from Clermont Auvergne Métropole.

Against a backdrop of growing international competition, the platform aims to strengthen the European industrial capabilities needed to foster the development of new value chains based on renewable resources and to turn scientific innovations into tangible industrial solutions. 

Biotech Open Platform was created to address a very concrete challenge in biotechnology: how to move from a promising process at laboratory scale to a robust process that can work at industrial scale. The infrastructure is important, but equipment alone is not enough. Scale-up requires experience, technical know-how and the ability to solve the issues that appear as the process moves from one scale to another. Confidentiality and protection of intellectual property are also essential for the companies we work with. Our role is to help them move faster and more securely towards industrialization.

Khadidja Romari Chief Executive Officer of Biotech Open Platform

For more than a century, Danone has drawn on the science of fermentation to bring health through food to as many people as possible. With Biotech Open Platform, we are strengthening a critical link in Europe’s biotechnology ecosystem by accelerating the industrial scale-up of laboratory innovations. Biotech Open Platform demonstrates the value of shared infrastructure and long-term partnerships in enhancing European competitiveness.

Antoine de Saint-Affrique Chief Executive Officer of Danone

With the inauguration of Biotech Open Platform, we are turning a strong conviction into an industrial reality: biotechnology will play a major role in the sustainable transformation of many sectors. By providing companies with an open infrastructure and leading expertise, we want to accelerate the transition from research to industry. For Michelin, this is an opportunity to explore new ways of replacing certain molecules currently derived from petrochemicals with more sustainable, bio-based alternatives. More broadly, this platform aims to become a catalyst for innovation in support of European competitiveness.

Florent Menegaux Chairman of the Michelin Group 

One of the main barriers to the development of industrial biotechnology is access to capabilities that can demonstrate that an innovation can be produced reliably and competitively at greater scale. Biotech Open Platform provides a concrete response to this challenge by giving companies access to the infrastructure and expertise needed to accelerate the industrialization of biology-based innovations.

Jim Flatt Chief Executive Officer of DMC Biotechnologies

Biotech Open Platform fully illustrates a region’s ability to bring together industrial companies, entrepreneurs, researchers and investors around a forward-looking project. By supporting this initiative from the outset, Crédit Agricole Centre France sought to contribute to the creation of a structuring asset for innovation, employment and the economic attractiveness of our region, while helping develop a strategic sector for Europe.

Frédéric Baraut Chief Executive Officer of Crédit Agricole Centre France