The round was led by Axeleo Capital – Green Tech Industry Fund joined by the EIC Fund, NBank Capital, BonVenture, and seed investor Frank Jenner. The capital will support scale-up, commercialisation and construction of BIOWEG’s first-of-its-kind bacterial cellulose plant in Germany and accelerate market entry across Europe.
Founded in 2019 by Prateek Mahalwar and Srinivas Karuturi, BIOWEG converts food-industry side streams into bacterial cellulose via precision fermentation, refining it with green chemistry into drop-in alternatives to fossil-based polymers. The company operates a pilot plant production site in Quakenbrück (up to six tonnes capacity) and a material science, formulation and applications lab in Monheim within Bayer Crop Science’s campus.
The latest financing round, which brings the total amount raised by the company to date to EUR 22M, will enable the step-up from pilot to industrial production, including construction of an industrial bacterial-cellulose facility in Germany – designed to be able to meet the growing demand of industrial customers in sustainable microplastics-free ingredients. The plant design provides a pathway from the current 6,000-litre fermentation scale to large-volume manufacturing and will be co-located with a major sugar producer in Germany to secure feedstock synergies and lower operating costs. BIOWEG will also upgrade its Quakenbrück pilot line to serve near-term customer orders during construction, while expanding commercial, regulatory and production teams to further expand into the European market.
Europe’s restriction on intentionally added fossil based microplastics is reshaping ingredient supply chains across personal care, home care, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. Customers now require compliant, high-performance ingredients manufactured at scale within the EU; BIOWEG’s platform is designed to meet that need while enabling straightforward reformulation.
BIOWEG’s portfolio addresses priority use cases: Micbeads provide biodegradable leave-on micro-powders for cosmetics with premium sensorial performance; RheoWeg delivers biobased rheology and suspension control for personal and home care; AgriWeg offers seed and fertiliser coatings that enable controlled release and improved handling. With production capacity scaling in Germany, BIOWEG will focus on qualifying supply with customers and supporting reformulation programmes across Europe.
Source
Bioplastics MAGAZINE, 2025-09-16.
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