Giprobiosintez invests US$150 million into a gas-to-feed protein plant
Russian company, Giprobiosyntez, has rolled out plans to invest 10 billion roubles (US$150 million) into a new plant that will convert natural gas into fermented animal protein.
The new plant will be located in the Lotos special economic zone in the Russia’s Astrakhan region.
“The plans are to organise the production of 21,000 tonnes of protein-vitamin concentrates for enrichment of animal feed and 10,000 tonnes of protein concentrates for the food industry,” the Lotos press service said.
Giprobiosintez is a Moscow-based company that has been engaged in developing technology for producing microbial biomass with high protein content from natural gas over the past several years.
As explained by Vladimir Tsymbal, chairman of the board of Giprobiosintez, the company has been working on this technology for 6 years already, and “together with a team of Russian microbiologists, has created a microbial product with a high protein content, which can be used both in the food industry and in the production of animal feed.”
Lab and training centre
“Our company has its own laboratory and training center in Moscow. We have patented unique producer strains of natural origin without genetic modification, the use of which is harmless, non-toxic, non-toxinogenic, and non-pathogenic for living organisms. Our product is very interesting both to partners from Russia and abroad,” Tsymbal said.
Pavel Nyunkov, general director of Giprobiosintez, added that the company targets to ramp up production to 31,000 tonnes in the next 7 years and, if the project proves to be successful, to gradually increase it to 100,000 tonnes per year. The first stage is slated to be launched in 2024.
The rising popularity of bioprotein
Giprobiosintez is the third company to announce plans to launch feed protein production from natural gas, commonly known as bioprotein.
UniProtein has also unveiled plans to build 10 similar plants all over the country in the next decade with a designed production capacity of 100,000 tonnes per year each and with expected revenues of over US$1.5 billion. The investment cost was estimated at 18 billion rubles (US$270 million).
Plans to begin producing feed protein earlier were announced by Metanika, which worked on an experimental 100 m3 plant for protein biosynthesis, with a production capacity of up to 4,000 tonnes of protein per year. The company said that it was focused on a modular approach, under which the production could be quickly scaled up by putting new fermenters in operation.
