Globally, investments (both public and private) in fermentation (and particularly in precision fermentation) have increased significantly, and recently on a level close to the amounts invested in plant-based alternatives. There is evidence of a trend since 2019, after only occasional investments in those sectors in the years previously.

Of those investments, most have gone into microbial fermentation, rather than biomass or traditional fermentation.[1] These have been overwhelmingly made in Northern America, however, with Europe a distant second: USD 2.9 billion have been invested in fermentation in Northern America during the period 2013-2022, versus USD 0.4 billion in Europe over the same period.

By contrast, Europe has been leading public funding into research and commercialisation of fermentation. That includes both EU and national funding:

• EUR 13.1 millions in EU funding have been budgeted for the HealthFerm research collaboration.
• EUR 34 millions in funding from Finland have been granted to Solar Foods.
• EUR 10 millions have been allocated by Norway to a five year program on cellular agriculture and precision fermentation.
• EUR 60 millions has been announced by the Netherlands to invest in a full cellular agriculture ecosystem.
• EUR 16.9 millions in EU funding have contributed to the construction of one of the largest protein facilities in the Netherlands, dedicated to mycoprotein production.

The commercial landscape for fermentation is a dynamic one, with a steady increase in the number of companies across the biomass and precision fermentation landscape since 2013: there were 132 companies identified by the Good Food Institute in those sectors in 2022, against only seven before 2013 (not all of those companies would produce alternative proteins for food, however). A little under half of them are found in Europe, which has more companies in the sector than North America does.

A notable trend is the growing involvement of conventional protein companies in those new ventures, with of the well-known food and feed multinationals (e.g. Nestle, Cargill, GeneralMills, KraftHeinz, etc.) having in one way or another become participants in the growth of the sector.