Accelerate Biotechnological Innovations in Dairy (ABID)

The dairy industry produces large volumes of dairy co-products that are often used in low-value applications, such as, animal feed or disposed of via land spreading or wastewater treatment plants. Promising technologies are emerging that could provide more sustainable and higher value uses for these dairy co-products.

The EDA grant awards $1.2M to CDR to support inventors, entrepreneurs, and businesses that are developing methods to utilize dairy co-products, like permeate and acid whey, and convert them into higher value products like bioplastics, organic acids, and food ingredients. In addition to the EDA grant, partner organizations have matched funds or provided in-kind support totaling another $1.2M in cash or in-kind value.

The Accelerate Biotechnological Innovations in Dairy (ABID) grant program will allow CDR to select innovative technologies from anywhere in the U.S. that are ready to be scaled up. Successful applicants will bring their promising technologies to CDR’s world class pilot plant where they will have access to equipment and staff expertise to scale up their technology so that it can be implemented in the dairy industry.

As part of the grant, CDR will provide access to its recently opened pilot plant for the development of these technologies by the selected applicants. In addition to CDR’s pilot plant, the Center is in the process of installing a 400L bioreactor, which will play a key role in helping to develop and scale up the biofermentation technology necessary to convert dairy co-products into higher value green chemicals. There will also be a technical workforce component to this program, making sure future labor is aware of the opportunities and skills needed for these emerging industrial biorefinery jobs.

This grant program seeks to address the technical issues that all new technologies face as they seek to scale-up and commercialize their innovative ideas. Bench-top experimentation and pilot plant validation are relatively inexpensive processes but in order to get a shot at full commercialization, new technologies must be tested and validated at scale.

The CDR is interested in collaborating with entrepreneurs, scientists, and established companies with innovative technologies that are looking to get off the bench and demonstrate the ability to scale-up efficiently, without the need for costly manufacturing trials.

This grant program will assist new technologies in the scale-up of their concepts in a licensed dairy facility. The goal is to provide entrepreneurs with the operational and market details that the food industry demands in any commercialization.

The CDR will work with entrepreneurs to trouble-shoot process work-flows, calculate mass balance details, provide finished market-ready samples and proposed manufacturing work flow that is readily adoptable by the food industry.

The CDR is particularly interested in the generation of the following product categories:

• Organic Acids
• Bio-based/biodegradable packaging
• Platform Chemicals
• Probiotics or other natural food ingredients/materials

In the process development, the CDR will provide the following:

• Access to world-class licensed dairy processing equipment and scientists
• Priority access to the CDR’s pilot plant, involving up- & down-stream processing capabilities
• Funding to partially underwrite the cost of trials
• Referrals to key dairy industry players
• UW business, market, commercialization, and legal resources (D2P/WARF)
• Appropriate NDA to protect applicant Intellectual Property (IP)

As part of this award, if selected, CDR will partially subsidize pilot plant scale-up
trials. All companies must provide matching funds from their own sources.

The EDA Build to Scale grant is the latest effort by CDR to provide support for startups and accelerate new dairy technologies. In 2012, CDR received an i-6 innovation award from EDA, which led to CDR’s TURBO program. TURBO is CDR’s not-for-profit, business accelerator program that supports entrepreneurs and small companies developing new, innovative foods or beverages that contain a dairy ingredient.

Then, in 2019, CDR and the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association secured funding for the Dairy Business Innovation Alliance (DBIA), which assists dairy farmers and dairy processors in creating new revenue streams through farm diversification and the creation of value-added dairy food and beverage products via grant funding and technical assistance.

Information about both of these programs are linked at the bottom of this page.