Danone and Michelin-Backed Biotech Open Platform Opens €20 Million Fermentation Hub

Biotech Open Platform has inaugurated an industrial biotechnology facility in Clermont-Ferrand, France, designed to help companies move fermentation projects from laboratory development toward commercial scale.

The first phase represents more than €20 million of investment and includes fermentation capacity reaching 15 cubic metres, according to Michelin.

The initiative was created by Danone, Michelin, DMC Biotechnologies, Crédit Agricole Centre France, Clermont Auvergne Innovation and Greentech.

Its central purpose is to address the scale-up gap that often prevents promising fermentation processes from moving efficiently from small laboratory batches into industrial production.

The facility is open to startups, established industrial companies and research organisations and is already receiving advanced fermentation projects.

For food and agriculture, precision and industrial fermentation can support ingredients, proteins, enzymes, cultures and other products that depend on controlled biological manufacturing rather than conventional extraction alone.

The platform also includes downstream capabilities needed after fermentation, making purification and process development part of the scale-up pathway rather than treating the fermenter as an isolated step.

The project strengthens a European biomanufacturing cluster around shared infrastructure, reducing the need for every emerging biotechnology company to build its own pilot and demonstration capacity before proving commercial viability.