MiAlgae biotech firm

The Scotsman

MiAlgae, a Scottish biotech start-up firm, turns waste from the whisky industry into a sustainable source of omega-3 for feeding to farmed fish and pets

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:03 I'm Julian Pietrzyk, and I'm the head of technical transfer

00:14 at Myalgi.

00:15 Myalgi is a biotech SME founded in 2016.

00:20 And the idea really was to have a biotech company

00:23 with a focus on circular economy,

00:25 specifically in Scotland.

00:26 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:31 So at the moment, there's a global shortfall

00:33 of omega-3s of about 1 million tons a year.

00:37 And we've got the Scottish whiskey industry generating,

00:40 I think, annually about 3 billion liters of co-product.

00:44 And with the circular economy spin,

00:46 we try to marry up that surplus and that demand.

00:49 My name is Pablo Chisbert, and I'm an R&D scientist

00:53 at Myalgi.

00:53 First time I heard about Myalgi was while I was doing my MSc

00:58 in industrial biotechnology.

00:59 And it was actually a speaker from Zero Waste Scotland

01:03 that introduced us to Myalgi.

01:05 At Myalgi, we produce omega-3.

01:07 It's an alternative source to the current method

01:10 that is being produced.

01:11 It's more sustainable, and it's competitively priced.

01:16 The usual source of omega-3s that we generally have

01:19 is from fish oil, which really is just minced up fish.

01:23 And instead, what we try and do is we try and skip out

01:26 that middleman, because fish don't actually

01:28 make their own omega-3s.

01:29 It's all in their diet and the algae that they eat.

01:32 So we are able to grow this microalgae on these co-products

01:36 from the whiskey industry, and we harvest

01:38 that very rich omega-3 biomass.

01:41 With Zero Waste Scotland, in the early days,

01:43 we had a bit of support funding from them,

01:46 but also quite a lot of good advice

01:47 from their bioeconomy team.

01:49 And then we heard about the circular economy investment

01:51 fund, which looks fantastic, because it helps with capital

01:54 costs for equipment.

01:56 We did the expression of interest for that.

01:58 Then we went through to the full application.

02:01 And then when we got that cash, we

02:03 had matched private investment funding,

02:06 and that helped to really expand our commercial demonstrator.

02:10 We went from a single 30,000-liter tank

02:12 to eight 30,000-liter tanks, along with all the downstream

02:16 processing equipment and all the infrastructure as well.

02:19 When I first joined the company, I

02:21 was mostly based at the demonstrator site in Balfron.

02:26 And later on, I moved to a more tech transfer and R&D role

02:31 here in Edinburgh.

02:32 I'm aware that part of my salary was partially funded as well

02:36 by Zero Waste Scotland.

02:38 In terms of the scope 3 emissions,

02:39 we're actually in a very good starting place,

02:42 as we work with a lot of very like-minded businesses.

02:45 So our main feedstock actually comes from the whiskey

02:48 distillery and the whiskey industry.

02:51 And they have all pledged to be net zero by 2040.

02:55 My advice, really, for anyone that

02:56 was looking to incorporate any kind of circular economy

02:58 model in their business would really

03:00 be to look for those opportunities,

03:02 because really, they are all around.

03:05 So many large industries have surplus, like co-products,

03:08 that they are now having to either pay to get rid of,

03:11 or are spreading it on land, or there

03:13 are environmental impacts to it.

03:15 So you don't have to look too hard to find them.

03:18 And it is pretty daunting, because there's a lot of R&D.

03:21 Trust me, there's a lot of R&D in that.

03:23 But again, we're always open for collaborations.

03:26 And there are several other Scottish organisations

03:28 that are also collaborating with several of these industries

03:31 to try and tackle these environmental issues.

03:35 [MUSIC PLAYING]

03:38 [MUSIC PLAYING]

03:42 (upbeat music)

03:44 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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