New Wave Biotech has announced a partnership with the UK’s Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) to address challenges in lipid extraction, a key process in industries such as food, personal care, and pharmaceuticals. The collaboration will focus on optimizing both solvent-based and non-solvent methods for extracting lipids, using AI-powered simulations to improve efficiency and reduce reliance on trial-and-error methods.
The goal of the partnership is to use New Wave Biotech’s hybrid AI platform to run simulations that can predict the performance, cost, and sustainability of different lipid extraction methods. This will allow CPI to identify the most effective approaches earlier in the development process, accelerating the scaling of more sustainable lipid-based alternatives.
Lowering lipid costs across industries
Nix Hall, Chief Technology Officer at New Wave Biotech, commented, “Lipid costs are visible in everything from food to cosmetics, and solving this challenge is key to making alternatives affordable and accessible. By combining predictive accuracy with techno-economic and sustainability insights, our platform helps innovators cut down on trial and error and move faster towards solutions that benefit both industry and consumers.”
The project comes at a time when demand for lipid-based ingredients is growing across various sectors. Lipids are essential in products ranging from baked goods to cosmetics, but extracting them efficiently has proven difficult. Solvent-based methods, though common, are energy-intensive and require large quantities of toxic chemicals. Non-solvent methods, on the other hand, offer a safer and more sustainable alternative but are often more expensive and inconsistent, making them less viable at scale.
AI that outperforms industry standards
This collaboration builds on previous successes where New Wave Biotech’s platform demonstrated up to four times the accuracy of industry standards in predicting results from a single dataset. The project is supported by an Innovate UK grant under the UKRI National Engineering Biology Programme and is expected to help accelerate the development of scalable, sustainable lipid extraction technologies.
In addition to this partnership, New Wave Biotech has been active in the food technology sector, publishing a whitepaper earlier this year on how food tech innovators can apply lean startup principles to scale their operations more efficiently. The company also raised €1.2 million in late 2024 to expand its team and broaden its customer base.
Stephen Wright, Manager of Downstream Processing at CPI, added, “Partnering with New Wave Biotech gives us powerful new tools to help clients scale sustainable products. Unlike many AI/ML tools that need huge datasets, this platform achieves high accuracy from minimal data, allowing us to identify the best downstream routes much earlier and with greater confidence.”
