Latest / The Manufacturing Podcast with Fexingo: Factories, Supply Chains, and Industrial Business / How a Belgian Factory Is Making Fish Feed from Beer Waste
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this factory in Ghent, Belgium — a city I mostly associate with beer and canals — and it's making fish feed from the leftover grain of a nearby brewery. Luna: Wait, like the spent grain that breweries usually sell to farms for cattle feed? Lucas: Exactly that. Spent grain is the main solid byproduct of brewing — wet, fibrous, still packed with protein. Globally, we produce about 10 million tons of it every year. Most goes to low-value animal feed or just rots in landfill. Luna: So what's the Ghent factory doing differently? Lucas: It's called Veramaris. They take that spent grain and run it through a fermentation process with a specific strain of algae. The algae eat the sugars and proteins in the grain and produce a concentrated oil rich in two omega-3 fatty acids: EPA and DHA. Luna: Which are exactly what salmon farmers need to add to their feed to keep fish healthy and give consumers that omega-3 benefit. Lucas: Right now, most of that EPA and DHA in fish feed comes from wild-caught fish like anchovies and sardines, ground up into fishmeal and fish oil. It takes about 4 to 5 kilograms of wild fish to produce 1 kilogram of farmed salmon. That's not sustainable if we're trying to scale aquaculture to feed a growing population. Luna: So Veramaris is basically replacing the wild fish with brewery waste and algae. Lucas: Yes. And the factory is already at commercial scale — 2,000 tons of omega-3 oil per year from one facility. They're planning to expand to 20,000 tons by 2028. Luna: Let's talk about the unit economics. How many liters of beer does it take to make a kilogram of this oil? Lucas: Roughly 1,000 liters of beer yields about 200 kilograms of wet spent grain. That 200 kilograms, after fermentation and extraction, produces around 10 kilograms of the omega-3 oil. So you're looking at about 100 liters of beer per kilogram of oil. Luna: That's actually more efficient than I expected. And the cost compared to conventional fish oil? Lucas: Veramaris doesn't publish their prices, but industry estimates put their production cost somewhere between $8 and $12 per kilogram of oil. Conventional fish oil has been trading around $5 to $7 per kilogram recently. So they're a bit more expensive, but the gap is closing as they scale and as fish oil prices become more volatile due to overfishing quotas and El Niño cycles. Luna: And the big salmon buyers — companies like Mowi and Cermaq — are they actually paying the premium? Lucas: Yes. Mowi committed to sourcing 50 percent of their omega-3 from alternative sources by 2030. Veramaris already has offtake agreements with several major feed producers. The premium is small enough that it doesn't significantly impact the final price of salmon, and it gives the buyers a sustainability story that retailers and consumers are increasingly demanding. Luna: So the factory itself — what does it look like? I'm picturing something that smells like a brewery crossed with a biotech lab. Lucas: Pretty close. It's a two-story facility right next to the Alken-Maes brewery in Ghent. The spent grain comes in via a pipeline — literally a tube from the brewery to the factory. No trucks, no carbon cost for transport. Inside, there are a series of stainless steel fermentation vessels, each about the size of a small car, where the algae do their work. Luna: And the energy to run the fermentation? Lucas: The factory runs on grid electricity, but they're in Belgium where the grid is about 60 percent low-carbon — nuclear and renewables. They also capture the heat generated by the fermentation process and use it to dry the remaining solids, which then go to a local biogas plant. Luna: So it's nearly zero-waste. The grain comes in, the oil goes out, and the solids become energy. Lucas: Exactly. And the water used in the process is treated and returned to the city's water system. The whole operation is designed to be a closed loop. Luna: I want to zoom out a bit. This is one factory in one city. How replicable is this model? Lucas: The technology is modular. Veramaris is already talking about licensing the fermentation process to breweries in other regions. The idea is that a mid-sized brewery could host a small fermentation unit on-site, turn their spent grain into oil, and sell it directly to feed producers. The economics work best at a scale of at least 50,000 hectoliters of beer per year — that's about a medium-sized craft brewery. Luna: So we could see these units popping up next to breweries in Portland, in Munich, in Tokyo? Lucas: Exactly. And that would dramatically reduce the logistics cost of moving wet spent grain, which is heavy and spoils quickly. Right now, most spent grain is trucked within a 50-kilometer radius. If you can process it on-site, you save all that. Luna: What about the regulatory side? Using a brewery byproduct to make feed for salmon — is that approved everywhere? Lucas: The European Union approved Veramaris's oil as a feed ingredient in 2020 under the novel foods regulation. The United States FDA gave a Generally Recognized as Safe, or GRAS, designation in 2021. So the major markets are open. The bigger hurdle is consumer acceptance — some people are squeamish about 'beer-fed salmon,' even though the final product is chemically identical to fish oil. Luna: It's funny — we happily eat beer-battered fish, but beer-fed fish feels weird to people. Lucas: Right. But the science is solid, and the sustainability case is compelling. If aquaculture is going to supply the protein for 10 billion people, we need alternative feed sources. Spent grain is abundant, cheap, and currently underutilized. Luna: One more thing — the name Veramaris. I think it's a portmanteau of 'vera' meaning true and 'maris' meaning sea. True sea. Lucas: I think you're right. And there's something nice about that — taking a waste stream from land and turning it into something that belongs in the ocean. Luna: So if someone wanted to dig into this more, where would they start? Lucas: Veramaris has a technical white paper on their fermentation process. Also, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council has updated their feed standards to include alternative omega-3 sources. Both are good entry points. Luna: Makes me think about all the other waste streams from food and beverage that could be upgraded similarly. Coffee chaff, grape pomace... Lucas: Yeah, and there are companies working on those. But the beer waste to fish feed pipeline is probably the most mature example right now. And it's already working at commercial scale. Which, honestly, is rare in this space. Luna: True. A lot of circular economy ideas sound great in a pitch deck but never leave the lab. Lucas: And on that note — and I mean this genuinely — the reason we can spend time visiting factories like Veramaris and talking about what's actually working is because of a small group of listeners who chip in monthly to keep this show ad-free and independent. Luna: Yeah, it's a pretty small operation behind the scenes. Lucas and I do the research, the writing, the recording, and the editing. And the funding comes from listeners who find value in these deep dives. Lucas: So if these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way, and you want to help us keep making them, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's not a subscription — more like a virtual tip jar. And it genuinely makes a difference. Luna: No pressure at all. We're grateful for everyone who listens, whether you contribute or not. Lucas: Alright. Let's get back to the factory floor. Because I think the most interesting part of the Veramaris story is still ahead: how they plan to go from 2,000 tons to 20,000 tons in two years. Luna: What's the bottleneck? Is it the brewery supply, the fermentation capacity, or the market demand? Lucas: It's actually the fermentation capacity. The Alken-Maes brewery can supply more spent grain, but the factory needs additional fermenters. They're building two new ones this year, each with 50 percent more volume than the original. That should double capacity by mid-2027. Luna: And the market demand is there? Lucas: According to their CEO, they could sell five times what they currently produce if they had the supply. The salmon feed industry is hungry for consistent, traceable, low-carbon omega-3. And Veramaris offers a product with a carbon footprint about 70 percent lower than fish oil from wild-caught anchovies. Luna: That's a huge selling point. Especially for European retailers who are under pressure to report Scope 3 emissions. Lucas: Exactly. And the factory's location in Ghent means it can serve the North Sea salmon farming cluster — Norway, Scotland, Ireland — via barge or short-sea shipping, which is lower carbon than trucking. Luna: So the whole thing is designed for low-carbon logistics from the start. Lucas: It really is. And that's the kind of manufacturing story that doesn't get told enough — not just a new product, but a whole system designed around waste reduction, energy efficiency, and proximity to customers. Luna: I'm curious about the algae itself. Is it a genetically modified strain, or something found in nature? Lucas: It's a naturally occurring strain of Schizochytrium, which is a type of marine microalgae. They selected it for high oil content and fast growth on spent grain hydrolysate. No genetic modification, just traditional selection and optimization. Luna: So it's essentially the same algae that already produces omega-3 in the ocean. They just feed it beer waste instead of whatever it eats in the wild. Lucas: Exactly. And because it's grown in a closed fermenter, there's no risk of contamination or escape into the environment. It's a contained industrial process. Luna: Alright, last question: what's the one thing you want listeners to remember from this episode? Lucas: That the next time you drink a Belgian beer, you might be helping feed a salmon. And that's not a gimmick — it's a real, scalable manufacturing process that's already working. Luna: That's a good line. I'm stealing it. Lucas: Please do.