A program roadmap for an alt-protein mycelium platform, running February 2022 through December 2025 across three stages: small-scale pilot, large-scale pilot, and commercial.
The small-scale pilot covered strain selection by A/B testing of the foundational organism, a root-cause investigation into deviant morphology that threatened product quality, a grain age study, process and equipment design for microbial knockdown, and bioefficiency work on feedstock supplementation, environmental control and pre-treatment.
The large-scale pilot commissioned a new chamber system and its control SOPs, then pushed throughput and total volume output — dialing in the confounding variables of temperature, moisture and airflow, and running the pasteurize-versus-sterilize A/B on feasibility, economics and throughput. That comparison was the largest stage gate in the program. It closed with in-house continuous-flow sterilization plant testing and supplier validation.
Commercial scale was technology transfer: full-scale launch of in-house grown mycelium with on-site manufacturing, then transfer to a Canadian co-manufacturing site including training and site remodeling, a rebuild of the seven-person downstream processing team and its product specification, and upstream A/B testing and root-cause work on raw material handling to close out intermittent quality assurance issues.