Start-up Yemoja’s cultivation delivers customised microalgae.
Marine ingredient start-up Yemoja has created a platform for cultivating customised, pharmaceutical grade microalgae on demand. The company utilises a fast-track photobioreactor technology, setting a new standard for microalgae production.
Yemoja cultivated microalgae can be tailored to desired nutritional compounds and functionalities. The start-up can produce algae-centered ingredients standardised to any bioactive compounds or algae extract encompassing fucoxanthins, polysaccharides, xanthophylls, carotenoids, enzymes, and more.
Eyal Shalmon, CEO of Yemoja, commented: “There is a vast ocean of microalgae species not yet discovered, and only a dozen or so are commercially available. The market is still in the early stages of tapping into the immense potential of these marine supercrops. Our mission is to boost the entire microalgae value chain with new varieties and yields, and bring them to the mainstream of high-end nutraceutical food and cosmeceutical spheres with additional formulations in the pipeline.”
Erez Ashkenazi, COO and co-founder of Yemoja, added: “Yemoja’s technology evolved from a deep-rooted appreciation of biopharma and marine sciences, supported by extensive experience in algae cultivation. This unprecedented capacity was collectively harnessed to produce a variety of pure algae at any scale, and in a short time – something the microalgae market has not witnessed until now.”
Yemoja’s cultivation methodology overcomes many of the industry’s challenges, specifically compositional homogeneity, scalability, and contamination proofing, and ensure clean, safe microalgae throughout the process.
The start-up operates an indoor, contaminant-free closed cultivation system that maintains control of key parameters such as temperature, pH, light, and CO2 emissions, and allows for the simultaneous growth of multiple species in a controlled environment. This ensure consistent supply of standardised specialty ingredients, and offers new capabilities to meet the specific needs of suppliers.
Amikam Bar-Gil, CTO and co-founder of Yemoja, concluded: “Microalgae are sunlight-driven, single-celled factories, and by nature highly resilient and versatile. They also are a powerful source of natural, vegan, bioactive ingredients. Our innovative approach serves to create more pure, sustainable microalgae-derived products of the highest quality, and that can be naturally adapted into any desired matrix.”
Yemoja is currently moving into Round B funding. It already has raised US$4 million in seed funds and investments from the Israel Innovation Authority.
