Melt&Marble’s EUR 7.3 million Series A is a clear bet on the industrialisation phase of precision fermentation: moving from lab-grade innovation to repeatable, commercial supply for large formulation customers.
The Swedish company said it will use the funding to scale production and commercialise its precision-fermented “designer fats”, with initial market entry targeted at personal care in 2026 and food thereafter. The round was led by deep-tech investor Industrifonden and included the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, alongside strategic corporate investors Beiersdorf and Valio. Terms were not disclosed.
Why this round matters
This is not a pure financial syndicate. The inclusion of Beiersdorf (personal care) and Valio (food) signals that Melt&Marble’s thesis is being underwritten by end-market players that understand both the performance requirements and the qualification burden for new ingredients.
For a platform company selling ingredients rather than finished consumer products, commercialisation hinges on two execution paths:
- Proving performance at scale: consistent fatty-acid profiles, stability, sensory and functional attributes that match or beat incumbent fats.
- Winning qualification cycles: regulatory readiness, documentation, and customer validation that can stretch across multiple quarters.
Strategic investors can compress both timelines if they move beyond equity into structured co-development and early offtake discussions. The extent of those commercial commitments has not been disclosed, so the practical level of de-risking remains a key open question.
With-trend signal: Europe’s institutional capital backs scale-up biology
The participation of the EIC Fund, following an earlier EUR 2.5 million EIC Accelerator grant in 2024, underlines continued public and institutional appetite for European deep-tech and biotech-adjacent companies pushing into manufacturing.
In aggregate, reporting indicates Melt&Marble has raised roughly EUR 10 million over the past year when combining the grant and the new equity round. That sequencing fits a broader European pattern: grants and public capital help bridge early technical risk, while later rounds increasingly focus on production scale-up, QA systems and route-to-market.
Strategic lens: the buyer set points to two beachheads
Melt&Marble is positioning its first launches in personal care (2026) and then in food, a sequencing that may be deliberate.
Personal care often offers:
- Smaller initial volumes relative to food, which can ease early capacity constraints.
- High value-per-kilogram ingredients where performance differentiation matters.
Food, by contrast, can deliver volume but demands tighter unit economics, broader regulatory coverage, and supply reliability.
Beiersdorf’s presence suggests Melt&Marble is building toward credible adoption in cosmetic formulations, while Valio’s involvement highlights potential pathways into food-grade applications. Both corporates can also serve as validation points for other brands and manufacturers, provided Melt&Marble can meet specification and cost targets.
Integration and execution: scaling is the hard part
The core risk now shifts from scientific novelty to industrial execution.
Key questions for Melt&Marble’s scale-up plan include:
- Manufacturing readiness: whether scaling will rely on contract fermentation capacity, build-to-suit partnerships, or a longer-term owned footprint. The company has not detailed its production model.
- Quality systems and traceability: ingredient customers will expect robust QA/QC, batch consistency and documentation from day one.
- Go-to-market focus: whether the company prioritises a narrow set of high-value use cases to shorten sales cycles, or broadens too early and stretches technical and commercial bandwidth.
- Strategic partner depth: whether Beiersdorf and Valio involvement translates into joint development, pilot programmes, and early purchasing, or remains primarily financial.
For investors, the near-term value inflection is likely tied to demonstrating repeatable production economics and converting strategic interest into contracted demand.
What to watch next
- Evidence of pilot-to-commercial manufacturing progress, including the chosen production model and capacity roadmap.
- Signals of customer qualification milestones in personal care ahead of the stated 2026 launch target.
- Any announced co-development or offtake arrangements with Beiersdorf, Valio or other formulation players.
- Hiring and organisational build-out across manufacturing, QA, and regulatory functions.
- Follow-on funding needs as the company moves from scale-up to sustained commercial supply.