The basic idea behind fermentation is not new. What’s changed is what the organisms are producing and how we control their environment to reliably produce novel products.

In the alternative protein space, you might engineer yeast, bacteria or mycelium to convert feedstocks such as dextrose, methanol or glycerol into specific proteins. In some cases, it is desirable for those proteins to replicate the amino acid profile of animal protein. In others, they need to behave a certain way in food processing or match the taste and texture consumers expect. What makes this approach compelling is that these systems can convert feedstocks directly into protein, with organisms selected and developed to produce specific outputs. 

That’s where the scaling challenges appear.

From Lab to Kitchen Tables

Each step, from lab to kitchen table, requires more equipment, more infrastructure and more capital. Moving from pilot-scale vessels to demonstration and commercial production means investing in larger systems long before demand is proven, starting with thoughtfully designing or selecting scaleup facilities to prove out technology. This transition is critical, and success depends on getting early engineering and design decisions right.

Experts recognize commercial facilities are not exact replicas of pilot systems. Scaleup and testing are essential to navigate challenges that may not appear at lab scale. Unwanted co-products can emerge at low concentrations and only become visible when processes are run at larger volumes, requiring pilot and demonstration facilities to generate sufficient material for detection and mitigation through downstream processing or further organism development. For commercial facilities to be successful, they require high product selectivity and efficient throughput.

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Even as the industry works through demand versus scaling and delivery, investment has not disappeared, though it is more selective. Going from a promising process on paper to a full commercial facility is a harder climb than it was five years ago.

That elevates the economics of these systems from a constraint to a competitive advantage, as achieving true cost competitiveness becomes critical to long-term success and sustained customer adoption beyond early market enthusiasm.

Technoeconomic analysis helps identify where the leverage points are to better understand factors like facility size, feedstock costs and equipment utilization. This analysis drives cost of goods and design decisions; it can just as importantly inform R&D priorities and guide project development, identifying key assumptions and risks early. For example, higher fermentation titers may not improve economics if they extend cycle times, and larger bioreactors do not always reduce capital costs if there is long turnaround time.

Furthermore, as the market has evolved, price has become a more significant factor in adoption, placing greater pressure on production costs and the need for scalable technologies that move beyond lab-scale proof of concept. A few years ago, it was different. There was the initial excitement around new products like the Beyond and Impossible Burger and shoppers were curious to try something new. However, consumer trends continue to shift and chasing the latest wave of demand adds risk, reinforcing the need for disciplined, strategic approaches to scaling production. 

New Category, New Costs

As consumer demands evolve, so do market prices and therefore production costs. Price matters. Perception matters. Long-term design matters. Solving the capital cost challenge for these facilities is critical to enabling broad production at scale. Success increasingly depends on viewing fermentation facilities as full lifecycle systems — leveraging lessons from past projects and integrating successful processes and facility designs early and grounding decisions in current, real-world conditions to control costs, manage risk and adapt as the market continues to change.

One pattern often seen with first-of-a-kind plants is over-engineering. When you are building something that has never been built at that scale, the instinct is to be conservative with extra instrumentation or additional equipment to cover any possible operating scenario.

If developers can narrow those design ranges and identify real operating conditions earlier, they can right-size equipment instead of building systems the facility may never need. Reducing uncertainty earlier in the design process by incorporating construction and execution considerations into design decisions and therefore reducing potential risk is the focus of modern tools at firms like Black & Veatch.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also playing a role in this area in laboratories and pilot environments, accelerating the identification of target molecules and pathways and enabling faster screening and selection of organisms through lab automation. However, process scaleup and commercial facility design must keep pace to address current bottlenecks in production at scale. At Black & Veatch, those same tools help experts optimize layouts, monitor construction schedules and improve efficiency overall, reducing unnecessary over-building and controlling costs. That alone can significantly reduce facility capital requirements.

Over the Horizon

As for what the fermentation plants of the future will look like, the honest answer is that they may not look dramatically different from the ones being built today.

Technology startups are increasingly partnering with established manufacturers that already operate facilities and possess the necessary operational expertise. Others are looking at existing fermentation assets that have become available as industries evolve.

Large breweries provide one example. As facilities close, they leave behind fermentation vessels, utilities and infrastructure that, in some cases, could be repurposed. Some companies are beginning to explore whether these underutilized assets can help them get product into the market faster without building entirely new facilities, particularly where processes require lower oxygen and mixing demands and organisms that can tolerate more variable conditions.

The real shift isn’t how these facilities look; it’s what they make possible. For the first time, we can design protein production as an engineered system rather than something tied to land, livestock and growing cycles, constraints that often come with lower yields and higher water consumption.

Getting there will depend on engineering and the companies that learn how to design, finance and build these facilities efficiently, while also developing robust, scalable organisms and processes, will ultimately determine how quickly this industry moves forward.

Authors used AI tools to spell-check and review grammar. Final reporting and verification were conducted by the editorial team.