Cauldron brews $10.5 million to globalise its precision fermentation platform

Agtech startup Cauldron has just secured a historic $10.5 million in seed funding. Hailing from Orange in regional New South Wales, the company has its eyes on the global precision fermentation market.

The round was led by the CSIRO’s investment arm — Main Sequence Ventures. It’s joined by Horizons Ventures and UNSW. This followed $528,000 of investment from the Queensland government back in January.

It’s also an important investment for other reasons.

I personally tend to avoid the term “female-founded” when it comes to reporting on startups. I prefer to highlight the achievements, and roadblocks, of women in Australian businesses by continuously reporting on them without this particular label.

But in this case, it is absolutely worth highlighting that this $10.5 million raise is one of the largest seed rounds landed by a woman-founded and led business in Australia.

Let’s hope this becomes more than a trend and also extends to later — and historically larger — funding rounds throughout the Australian startup sphere.

Cauldron is bringing ancient food practices into the future

Fermentation is a food practice that has been woven into cultures throughout the world for thousands of years. 

Beer and wine are classic examples, but beyond booze, fermentation practices have seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years. Think kombucha hitting Woolies or everyone getting very into homemade sourdough in the first few months of lockdown.

As a bit of a modern kitchen witch myself, I get it. My house is regularly filled with starters, cultures, kefir grains, and even a jar of actively fermenting three-year miso paste.

I love it because of the positive probiotic and digestive impacts these things have on my health. And making them myself is both cheaper and fun. 

But precision fermentation takes this process well beyond our under-bench cupboards. It’s fermentation at scale that is faster and provides more precise conditions for bacteria and microorganisms to produces the likes of fat, protein and fuel.

Up until now, precision fermentation has been largely used in the pharmaceutical space. For example, it replaced the need to use pig pancreases to create insulin.

However, the industry has had issues scaling due to the time and cost involved. 

Cauldron is looking to change this. It also wants to expand the global scope of commercial precision fermentation to include food production. And there couldn’t be a better time. The industry is expected to hit $700 million by 2040 and we’re living in an era where climate change is threatening the future of agriculture.

We’re in need of alternative solutions and what we’re seeing here is the past being injected into the future of food.

“Humanity has spent thousands of years getting fermentation to work. With Cauldron’s revolutionary fermaculture platform, we are supercharging that process and unlocking the next evolution of how we produce food, feed, and fibre globally,” Cauldron CEO and founder, Michele Stansfield, said in a statement.

Faster and cheaper

Cauldron has developed its own ‘hyper-fermentation’ platform that utilises a continuous fermentation process.

According to the startup, it helps companies that use precision fermentation to scale and commercialise faster by increasing efficiency fivefold. 

“Our technology, 35 years of expertise, combined with Australia’s unique infrastructure and abundance of natural resources, will help ensure companies in this space can get new products and ingredients to market quickly, at lower cost and risk,” Stansfield said.

Some Australian startups are already getting on board, including biotech company Loam Bio and ULUU — which is using fermentation and seaweed to replace traditional plastics.

Both companies have been featured in SmartCompany over the past few months and are using the Cauldron platform to scale their production.

Cauldron plans to use its new funds to expand its pilot facility in Orange, as well as build an entire network of them through regional Australia.

This is where Australia’s agriculture expertise lies, so bringing more potential jobs to the region is a boon. Further to that, experts in the startup world agree that we are likely to see more businesses crop up and receive financial support outside of major city hubs in the future.