The journey of an innovative process from the lab to an industrial scale generally involves three phases. The first phase is the development of the process to improve the space-time yield of the product, to reduce the energy, water, ingredients and materials consumption and to select scalable unit operations. The second phase is the scale-up, to test the selected industrial equipment and unit operations and optimise the settings. The third phase is to produce the first batches of the innovative product to test the quality and applications and to enter the market before taking the financial risk of building your own production line or entering a large scale CMO.
At the BBEPP we have the experienced personnel and the equipment to perform all these steps and phases. We perform them in an integrated and iterative way, in which phases and steps can be combined or repeated to meet the specific objectives of each customer and project.
To reduce risk and costs, its key to balance the speed of scale-up with feasibility testing at the smallest possible scale. Exposing the process to industrial conditions in an early stage accelerates the development. Returning to the lab or small pilot scale to introduce a new strain or investigate a phenomenon after a larger production run is sometimes the most efficient way forward.