GEA has relocated its Application and Technology Center (ATC) for New Food and Biotechnology from Hildesheim to Sarstedt, Lower Saxony, Germany. The center has been in operation since 2023; three years of pilot projects and customer work feed directly into its continued work in Sarstedt. It helps companies in the food, ingredients and biotechnology sectors develop and test pilot-scale production processes for precision fermentation, cell cultivation and other biomanufacturing applications.

GEA invested EUR 4 million to convert and equip an existing building at the Sarstedt site where process expertise in beverages, liquid dairy and New Food has grown over several decades. About 200 employees work there in engineering, sales, automation and service. The ATC brings around 40 more colleagues to the team.

Locating the ATC in Sarstedt puts New Food and biotechnology activities directly alongside established engineering and process capabilities. Customers can draw on the same GEA teams from early pilot trials through to full industrial plant design.

“This this new technology center strengthens Sarstedt as a place for engineering, technology and skilled jobs,” said Heike Brennecke, mayor of the city of Sarstedt. “It sends a clear signal that biotechnology is being developed here and put to work.”

“New Food and biotechnology need places where you can find out whether a promising process can actually become a viable industrial application,” said Klaus Stojentin, CEO of GEA’s Nutrition Plant Engineering Division. “In Sarstedt, we bring pilot infrastructure and engineering expertise under one roof. That gives our customers a stronger basis for their next decision.”

From lab results to sound investment decisions

Moving from the lab to industrial production is one of the toughest stages in biotech process development. An organism may produce a target product in the lab. A cell line may grow. A first prototype may look convincing. Whether any of that translates into an economically viable process only becomes clear when the work moves into larger, more integrated process steps.

At the ATC, companies can assess these questions early: Can the process be run consistently? What product quality does the target application require? To answer those questions, GEA connects bioreactors from 50 to 500 liters with upstream and downstream steps including media preparation, separation, filtration, hygienic process design and automation. The result is a more solid basis for the next decision, whether that means food-grade piloting, partnering with a contract manufacturer or planning an industrial plant.

“A good lab result creates interest. A solid process creates confidence. And sometimes the most valuable outcome of a test run is a clear no – because a process isn't stable enough yet, or the cost structure simply doesn't hold up. Learning that early can save a company a lot of time and capital.” – Frederieke Reiners, Vice President New Food & Biotech, GEA

Biotechnology applications extend well beyond New Food

Precision fermentation and cell cultivation get most of their public attention in the context of alternative proteins. Their applications extend well beyond that. Biotechnological processes can produce proteins, enzymes, amino acids, vitamins, flavors and other functional ingredients for food, feed and healthcare. Many of the underlying process steps are similar. But the right design depends on the organism, the product and the target application.

The New Food sector is moving more slowly than many early forecasts suggested. Financing, regulation, production costs and scale-up all influence how quickly new processes reach the market. For GEA, the core question is whether biotech processes can move safely, reliably and economically from the lab into industrial use.

The goal is not to replace conventional food production or agriculture. New biotech processes can open additional production pathways for specific ingredients, particularly where climate risks, animal health pressures, raw material shortages or fragile supply chains put existing systems under strain.

Connecting research to industrial application

Germany has strong capabilities in science, mechanical engineering, process industries and food production. Translating that into industrial-scale biotechnology requires these strengths to work together more closely. Research and financing matter. So does pilot infrastructure where companies can test technical and commercial assumptions before committing capital to larger assets.

Germany's federal government has recently identified precision fermentation and industrial biotechnology as priority future technologies. For GEA, what matters is whether that translates into concrete industrial structures: pilot facilities, predictable regulatory processes and partners across the full value chain.

The ATC in Sarstedt is one contribution to that ecosystem. It connects initial lab results with the question of whether a process can perform reliably at larger scale and justify the next investment decision.

At the opening, representatives from industry and biotechnology explored how Europe can build stronger scale-up pathways. Among the partners represented were the Biotechnology Fermentation Factory (BFF) in Ede, Netherlands, which is building open-access food-grade pilot capacity on the NIZO Food Innovation Campus, and Solar Foods in Finland, which is producing its fermentation-based protein Solein at industrial demonstration scale.