The bioindustrial start-up Chromologics has just closed a seed investment round led by Novo Holdings, supported by Nordic Food Tech and Vækstfonden. With EUR 1.9M in funding, the company can accelerate the development of fermentation-derived next-generation food colorants, starting with the red color ChromoRed.
Chromologics is a BII alumnus from the Business Acceleration Academy and in the spring of 2020, the start-up won the BII Acceleration Award between the seven companies in the program.
“I have been working with Chromologics since the beginning of 2020 and to see how quickly they have grown and matured into a scale-up company is fantastic. I believe that the robust fermentation technology Chromologics brings will be one of their key differentiators and they have truly hit a trending, emerging area, that is lacking good solutions today”, says Christian Brix Tillegreen, Senior Business Developer at BioInnovation Institute.
The company, a spin-out from the Technical University of Denmark, was founded by CEO Gerit Tolborg, CSO Anders Ødum, Thomas Ostenfeld Larsen, Andreas Laustsen and Henrik Dalbøge. It was CEO Gerit Tolborg who made the scientific breakthrough in 2016 when she developed a process that allowed her to isolate and identify this new class of pigments.
By designing a fermentation process in lab-scale bioreactors, she managed to single out one pigment from a pigment-cocktail. A novel process that opened up for the application of ChromoRed in consumer products.
The project received grants from both The Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Technical University of Denmark and Innovation Fund Denmark before joining BioInnovation Institute and closing the seed investment round with Novo Holdings, Nordic Food Tech VC and Vaekstfonden.
“Their support provides validation for our strategy to provide better and more sustainable food additives. They recognize the extraordinary economic opportunity in introducing lab-grown food colorants to the market. This investment will allow us to accelerate the development of our flagship product ChromoRed and maximize the potential of our platform as we develop food colorants that meet the needs of industry and consumers”, says Gerit Tolborg.
The company has moved to new offices in Søborg, Copenhagen and will in the coming months expand the team to meet future milestones.
Read more about Chromologics in this article:
Meet the bioindustrial start-up: Chromologics
