Zymofix Raises €6 Million to Build Belgium’s First Industrial-Scale Microbial Plant for Crop Biologicals
06 October 2026, Belgium: A Belgian biotechnology company is moving to close one of European agriculture’s most persistent gaps: the lack of large-scale, reliable manufacturing capacity for the living microorganisms used in biostimulants, biofertilizers, and biocontrol products. Zymofix, based in Ghent, announced on September 30, 2026, that it has raised 6 million euros in a Series A funding round to build its first industrial production facility in Deinze, Belgium, with operations scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027.
The round was led by First Imagine!, with participation from returning backers VP Capital, HTGF, and The Nest Family Office. It follows an earlier 2 million euro seed round the company closed in November 2024, according to trade coverage of the announcement.
Zymofix’s core technology, called Zyft, is a solid-state fermentation platform built to grow microbial strains that perform poorly in conventional liquid fermentation systems, which is how most biological crop inputs are currently manufactured. The company says it has tested more than 170 bacterial, fungal, and yeast strains on the platform. The Deinze facility will start at 300 tonnes of annual output, which the company estimates is enough to treat roughly one million hectares of farmland. A second expansion phase, budgeted at 25 million euros and targeted for 2028, would lift capacity to 2,000 tonnes a year.
The company already operates as a contract manufacturer for more than 15 customers, most of them multinational agricultural input companies, producing microorganisms used in biostimulants, biofertilizers, biocontrol products, and bioremediation applications. Headcount currently stands at about 35 employees, with plans to reach 60 by the end of 2027.
Zymofix co-founder and chief executive Emile Redant said manufacturing microorganisms consistently and at commercial volumes remains harder than developing the biology itself. Boris Dorin, a partner at First Imagine!, said manufacturing is where Europe’s biologicals sector is thinnest, arguing that Zymofix has validated solid-state fermentation at industrial scale. Mathijs van der Knaap of VP Capital said the company has paired a strong technical foundation with clear customer demand.
The investment lands at a moment when biologicals are shifting from a niche add-on to a structural part of crop protection portfolios, as regulators tighten rules on synthetic chemistries and growers look for tools that fit resistance-management and residue-reduction goals. But the industry has long been constrained less by the discovery of promising microbial strains than by the inability to manufacture them reliably and cheaply at the volumes commercial agriculture requires. Many biologicals developers in Europe have had to rely on contract manufacturers based in North America or Asia, adding cost, lead time, and supply chain risk. A dedicated, scaled European facility using fermentation technology suited to difficult-to-grow strains addresses a bottleneck that has slowed commercialization timelines across the sector.
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