‘Our aim at Yeasty is to produce sustainable and widely accessible proteins’

I met Mathieu Durand (my business partner and co-founder of Yeasty) in a beer brewing association when we were both in our first year at AgroParisTech: the aim of the association was to introduce other students to craft beers. We already knew we wanted to create a business, but the idea of Yeasty had not yet hit us. Actually, at the time, I was more interested in starting a brewery. After some careful thought, however, I decided it wasn’t the best idea. There were already 2,000 breweries in France: what value could I possibly add in this field? 

In the second year of the engineering program at AgroParisTech, we specialized in agrifood and chose the ‘Biorefinery and green chemistry’ option. This gave us the opportunity to study a number of recovery processes and visit several industrial plants where huge quantities of carbon- and nitrogen-rich matter is discarded as waste. Observing this, I wondered how we could set about recovering certain waste products, whether in the field of agrifood (proteins) or energy (with biofuels). Right from the start, we wanted our business project to have an impact not only from an environmental perspective, but also from a social point of view, with an innovative solution accessible to as many people as possible.

The idea of ‘Yeasty’ came from reading a report on yeast: it was then that I realized the scale of the quantities thrown away by breweries (at least 50,000 tons per year in France!) because the waste is too costly to process. This figure seemed enormous to me.
Having taken yeast in powder form as s sports supplement, I immediately saw the potential for trying to recover and process this product, which is valuable both from a nutritional point of view and as a source of protein! I asked Mathieu if he wanted to come on board on the technical side of things, and that is how it all started.

Project validation and acceptance at the Food’InnLab

Yeasty revalorise les levures non utilisées par les brasseries

To validate our project, we applied to the Maturation Panel’s call for projects, organized by the AgroParisTech Food’Innlab: we were validated by the panel and received a grant of €3,000 to launch the project, as well as access to the Food’InnLab laboratories and project support.
At this point, we decided to take a gap year to be able to give all our time to the Yeasty project. To complete our research, we also integrated the Génopole biotech laboratory. Having a number of strings to our bow enabled us to develop processes and test our first products directly. This was important because the major challenge in making waste yeast from breweries fit for consumption lies in removing its characteristic bitter taste (incidentally, this is why it is often consumed in powder form) and no-one knows how to realize its potential while keeping costs and environmental impact low.
The following year, we took part in the Enterprise Panel (again organized by the Food’InnLab) and won another grant, this time of €5,000, which was a huge help, particularly for project structure, R&D costs, etc.
Throughout the entire process, we have been supported by Grégoire Burgé, deputy director in charge of Innovation and coordinator of the InnLabs network, Salomé Falise, head of the Food’InnLab, and Sarah Hoenen, project manager. They have guided us in the right direction and provided advice through a network of experts, which has proven very valuable in moving forward to the next step: industrialization.

Since 2022 and thanks to the arrival of Juan Londono, Yeasty’s third co-founder in charge of marketing and communications, we already have potential clients (agrifood manufacturers) who are very interested in our project. Raising funds will enable us to invest in costly machinery, set up our own laboratory, recruit new talent, and industrialize the production of samples. The market for protein products is really booming, and the fact that we are the only enterprise in the world that can rid this yeast of its bitter taste without losing all its other properties (and without the use of chemicals!) gives us even greater confidence in a promising future for Yeasty! 
Where do we see ourselves in five years’ time? In just over a year’s time, our first pre-industrial unit will be operational, producing 100 tons per year. From early 2026, a large-scale production plant will be up and running, with the target of recovering 5,000 tons per year, which we will adapt according to customer demand, potentially up to 20,000 tons per year. In five years’ time we may go global, who knows! It may not all be smooth sailing, but these are the goals we have set ourselves, and we have made a start!