Exudation Agriculture: Highly Efficient and Continued Production of Carminic Acid Pigment for the Natural Colorants Industry

Objective

Natural pigments are gaining importance in the EU as safer and more sustainable alternatives to synthetic colorants, but their use also presents challenges which have been hindering their wide adoption in the colorants market, particularly in terms of scalability, cost, and ethical sourcing. Carminic acid is widely used as a natural alternative and exemplifies these production challenges: it requires a labour-intensive extraction process, has negative ethical and environmental impacts for insect cultivation and exploitation, and its production is unpredictable due to external factors like weather fluctuations. Our PoC project introduces a groundbreaking technology for the sustainable production of target metabolites like Carminic acid. We aim to demonstrate the feasibility of using our innovative technology to produce cheaper and more sustainable natural colorants and to develop a comprehensive Business Plan to ensure the technology's market readiness and sustainability. Furthermore, we will conduct thorough market analysis and industry discussions to test our business case with relevant stakeholders, while also identifying potential funding sources to support future commercialization efforts.