Ferm Labs AG, the Swiss-Italian ingredient innovator driving flavor and function solutions that "Cut costs, not taste. Naturally!", secured €3 million to scale its bioprocessing platform across the €45B global clean-label ingredient market - led by its flagship flavor builder Kokumesan®.
The investment was led by CDP Venture Capital (through its Green Transition Fund / NextGenerationEU), alongside a strong syndicate of European investors including Fund F, Redstone (in collaboration with Euregio+ and Alpine VC), and food industry leader Loacker.
Ending the Trade-Off Between Cost and Clean Label
Industrial food production has long faced the compromise between cheap synthetic additives and slow, costly natural ingredients. Founded in 2025 by serial entrepreneurs Stephanie Lüpold and Mattia Baroni, Ferm Labs eliminates this trade-off.
By guiding non-GMO microbes through custom parameters, Ferm Labs’ platform accelerates fermentation from weeks to hours. The high-yield system upcycles low-value sidestreams into potent kokumi peptide profiles - delivering stable, clean-label flavor pastes and powders free of E-numbers, added fats, or high sodium.
Commercial Flagship Driving Investor Confidence: Kokumesan®
A key Seed catalyst is the rapid adoption of Kokumesan®, the flagship flavor builder targeting the €68B US/European industrial cheese market. Upcycled from liquid whey, it delivers an authentic aged-cheese profile while revolutionizing factory economics:
- 75% Cost-in-Use Savings: Reduces expensive raw cheese inclusion in formulations from 20% down to under 1% without sensory degradation.
- High Processability: Eliminates fat and sodium build-up, preventing machine clogging while extending shelf life.
"We essentially broke the math on industrial flavor kinetics," says Mattia Baroni, CTO and Co-Founder. "By accelerating fermentation speed and yield, we eliminated the cost penalty of natural ingredients while delivering a richer, cleaner profile at an unbeatable cost-in-use.”
"The era of flavor trade-offs is officially over," adds Stephanie Lüpold, CEO and Co-Founder. "Kokumesan proves what our platform can do in cheese flavoring, but it is just our launchpad. We are building a category-defining B2B ingredient engine - powering the next era of natural food by uniting deep-tech bioprocessing with uncompromising taste at global scale."
Capital Deployment & Institutional Backing
The capital will fund three pillars: expanding bioprocessing capacity in South Tyrol, expanding the European B2B sales force, and scaling R&D headcount for new product categories.
"Ferm Labs has built an extraordinary deep-tech platform that redefines efficiency, sustainability, and flavor performance," said Enrico Filì, Head of Green Transition Fund at CDP Venture Capital. "We are thrilled to lead this round and support Stephanie, Mattia, and the team as they scale manufacturing and drive European expansion."