How to survive the biotech valley of death and scale bio-based innovation
- Melina Gerdts
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Head of Business Operations, Hendrik Waegeman, at Bio-base Europe Pilot Plant on how to set-up operations when scaling bio-based innovation from lab to fab.
Turning Grams into Tons: How BBEPP Is Solving Biotech’s Scaling Crisis
Let’s face it: getting a biotech innovation from the lab bench to the market shelf is like navigating an obstacle course in the dark. Most promising bio-based startups don't fail because their science doesn't work. They fail because scaling does.
And here’s the brutal truth: scaling is expensive, technically demanding, and often completely underestimated. Welcome to the "valley of death": the stretch between early discovery and commercial production where even the best ideas get stuck.
Time to introduce you to the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant (BBEPP), a not-for-profit scaling facility in Ghent, Belgium, helping biotech startups avoid that fate. Their mission? To turn grams into tons.
The Problem: Scaling Bio-Based Innovation Is Not Plug and Play
More than 90% of startups fail in the first three years, and in biotech, the odds are even worse. According to the EFB Bioeconomy Journal, only 1 in 5,000 to 10,000 biotech innovations actually make it to market.
Why? Because scaling a bioprocess isn't just about bigger tanks. It's about 24/7 process monitoring, sterility management, complex downstream purification, and massive capital and operational expenditures. And that’s assuming you have the multidisciplinary team needed to pull it off.
A Better Way: Shared Infrastructure, Shared Expertise
BBEPP offers an alternative: shared, open-access infrastructure for scaling bio-based processes. Instead of building their own pilot plant (a resource-draining headache), startups can work with BBEPP to test, scale, and validate their processes from 1L all the way up to 75,000L.
Their team handles everything from process translation and optimization to troubleshooting at industrial scale. The result? Startups can focus on what matters (getting their innovation market-ready) without losing years (and millions) to infrastructure headaches.
And they do this for a wide range of verticals: precision fermentation, food proteins, bioplastics, biopesticides, food colorants, and even exotic materials like spider silk.
From Fire Station to Scale-Up Hub
BBEPP started in 2008 with just €13 million and a derelict fire station (complete with its own swimming pool). Today, it has over €80 million in investments and a reputation as one of the largest pilot and demo plants in the world. That old swimming pool? It's now home to industrial fermentation tanks.
The growth has been methodical and intentional, step by step, investment by investment. The organization remains a not-for-profit, with all earnings reinvested into its growth and capabilities.
Real Impact: From Concept to Commercialization
In 15 years, BBEPP has supported over 900 projects for 270+ companies. Some of these collaborations have led to full-scale commercial facilities. Take the Scottish startup ENOUGH, which produces mycoprotein from bioethanol side streams. With BBEPP’s support, they scaled from 7-liter batches to 15,000-liter continuous fermentation and built a full-scale production plant with a total investment of nearly €100 million.
BBEPP also helped Celtic Renewables scale their fermentation of whisky industry byproducts into biofuels and chemicals, another example of waste-to-value made real.
In total, more than 500 million euro was invested in new biomanufacturing facilities all across Europe as a result of the scaling power of BBEPP.
Europe’s Scaling Landscape: Booming but Underutilized
While Europe has seen a boom in pilot and demo infrastructure since 2018, much of this capacity remains underutilized or at least not used to its full extent. BBEPP even launched a searchable database (“Pilots4U”) to map available infrastructure across Europe to help innovators navigate to existing infrastructure, because often they are not aware of what already exists.
In short, the physical space to scale bio-based innovation is growing, but the challenge is ensuring it's used effectively and by the right players.
The IP Question
BBEPP is clear on IP: if they don’t use proprietary in-house tech, all project results belong to the client. While downstream processes sometimes generate new know-how, startups retain the rights to their innovations, a critical trust factor in this sector.
The Regulation Bottleneck
Despite all this progress, one thing still slows everything down: regulation. Approval times for bio-based food ingredients, pesticides, and materials can stretch for years, often doubling or tripling timelines compared to the U.S. The rigid nature of European regulatory frameworks (like EFSA and REACH) deters investment and makes early ROI nearly impossible without very patient capital.
Advice to Startups: Think Beyond the Flask
Scaling isn't just about engineering, it's about thinking strategically. BBEPP encourages startups to plan backwards from their desired production model. Will you license your product? Sell it through a CDMO? Build your own plant?
Every answer influences what you should be testing at pilot scale. Water reuse, membrane lifespan, and batch-to-batch consistency aren't just details, they're make-or-break parameters when you're investing millions.
Conclusion: A Quiet Giant in Europe’s Bioeconomy
BBEPP's impact is massive. By lowering the barriers to scale, they’re enabling a new wave of bio-based solutions to reach the market. From food to materials to waste valorization, they are the backbone many startups never knew they needed.
Main Takeaways:
Scaling is the #1 challenge for most biotech startups, not the science itself.
BBEPP provides open-access infrastructure and expert teams for scaling from lab to industrial scale.
Over 900 projects have gone through BBEPP, with several leading to full commercial plants.
European scaling infrastructure is growing but underutilized; regulation remains the major bottleneck.
Startups must think ahead about their production strategy and plan pilot tests accordingly.
Listen to the full interview with BBEPP's Head of Business Operations Hendrik Waegeman on the bioCircular Loop Podcast!