The Iowa Economic Development Board has approved a $10 million grant for a partnership between Iowa State University's Research Park and an institute called BioMADE. The institute's chief technology officer Kevin Moore says they will build fermentation facility.
"There are many products today made by fermentation, things like amino acids that go into feed rations. Food ingredients like specialty sweeteners and vitamins like vitamin C," he says. Moore says bioplastics used in packaging are also made through fermentation. "Fermentation is the process in which a microorganisms converts sugar, typically r corn sugar, into some other higher value added product. So this project is really about enabling a wider product portfolio into a more specialty product portfolio for corn," Moore says.
He says it will be one of eight of these public-private entities mainly supported by the Department of Defense that cover different ranges of technologies. He says it will help early stage companies ramp up. "Quite literally hundreds of them, that have developed technologies fermentation technologies that are looking to scale up and de-risk and prove to investors that it's worthwhile to build a full scale facility," Moore says.
He says it helps move these companies ahead at a much faster pace. "And it will provide things like engineering data, customer samples, that will simply allow the larger investment to occur," he says. BioMade is contributing $20 million to the project and Iowa State will add another $10 million of in kind support.
The facility will be built at ISU's BioCentury Research Farm in Boone, with operations starting in 2028.