Galatea Bio Tech is an innovative start-up in White Bio Tech and Green Chemistry, a spin-off of the University of Milan-Bicocca and founded in 2013.The founding shareholders of the company are three professors in Industrial Biotechnology and Physics of the Matter of the University of Milan-Bicocca.Through a very important capital increase recently carried out, MAIN has become a partner of Galatea with the aim of giving a fundamental boost in the field of Green Economy and Bio-plastics.
The manufacturing of tens of thousands of chemical compounds, ranging from base, specialty and consumer chemicals is a worldwide industry that in the aggregate represents over 3,47 trillion € annual turnover. Oil, coal, and natural gas are the predominant feedstocks for this industrial complex.
While concepts such as Smart Cities and Industry 4.0 shine a spotlight on the process states enabled by digital/Web-based technologies, the changes brought about by synthetic biotechnology are more fundamental and foreshadow a tectonic, disruptive, and even geostrategic shift: Industry 5.0. Indeed, many of the base, specialty and consumer chemicals above mentioned can be made biologically by engineering the cellular metabolism, through the design of cell factories and by bioconversion.
Furthermore, although less than 10% of worldwide petroleum consumption is currently used for chemical production, bio-based processes leading to platforms of building blocks for chemicals and bioplastics create higher added-value compared to current biofuel production processes (which is about 120 millions ton/y on the planet). Industry 5.0 and industrial biotechnologies also respond to the urgency of mitigating the environmental impact of chemistry sector and the call for sustainable products and processes. Just to offer some figures, the UN Environmental Programme has estimated that the overall natural capital cost of plastic use in the consumer goods sector each year is US$75 billion: i.e., the financial impacts resulting from issues such as pollution of the marine environment or air pollution caused by incinerating plastic. 30 % of the natural capital costs of plastic are due to greenhouse gas emissions from raw material extraction and processing.
It is not surprising that industrial projections indicate that by 2025 industry 5.0 will contribute to the production of one quarter of chemicals and polymers sales.
However, despite the already obtained great bio-progresses, it is important to further broaden the range of chemical based products that can be bio-manufactured and to drive the cost and time of making these industrially meaningful productions. We need to apply a concept of circular economy using CO2, not edible biomass and organic wastes for the production of chemicals and services, obviously in a clearer, clean, efficient and sustainable way.
This is the quite ambitious Core Business of Galatea Bio Tech. More in detail, the Core Business is the development of technologies and bio-processes for the production base, specialty and consumer chemicals, which involves bio-fermentation and as well the production and marketing of these products and their derivatives. Therefore, these are all compounds with a low carbon footprint, contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, achieving thus Kyoto’s Protocol targets.
Galatea Bio Tech is mainly focused on the development and production of Bioplastics, whose unique features make it possible to replace conventional plastics from petrochemicals in an eco-friendly manner. The major Bioplastics is the polylactic acid (PLA).
Our ability in using a DNA recombinant technique makes it possible to engineer selected microorganisms aiming to obtain a large number of molecules and materials that can be used in many different applications. Galatea Bio Tech is also specialized in the production of enzymes, proteins, bi-functional molecules, organic acids and microbial strains suitable for the production of many different biomolecules. Our strength is the knowledge within the University in Synthetic Biotechnology and Materials Sciences. This latter, combined with our great flexibility, gives us the opportunity to fulfil any customer request, even on demand.
Galatea Bio Tech is a global market player to be included in the roll-call of green chemistry leading companies and a wider follower of sustainable development parameters.
