From lab to factory: scaling the bioeconomy with BioRevolution
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Welcome to this episode of Lexicon. I'm Christopher McFadden, contributing writer for Interesting Engineering. In this episode, we're diving into the future of biomanufacturing with Dr. Doug Friedman, CEO of Biomade. From biobased plastics to revolutionary food tech, biomanufacturing is transforming industries, creating jobs and keeping the US competitive. So, can biology replace fossil fuels? Can biotech revolutionise global supply chains? Let's find out.

Stay tuned as we explore the science strategy and economic impact of bioeconomy. Gift yourself knowledge. iE+ is a premium subscription that unlocks exclusive access to cutting-edge stories, expert insights and breakthroughs in science, technology and innovation. Stay ahead with the knowledge that shapes the future. Doug, thanks for joining us. How are you today? Doing great. Happy to be here. Excellent. For our audience's benefit, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, please?

Sure. So I'm Doug Friedman. I'm the CEO of Biomade. I started Manufacturing Innovation Institute really focused on driving industrial biotechnology and biomanufacturing in the United States. And it really goes back to essentially my upbringing as a scientist.

I'm a physical organic chemist by training, which may make you wonder why I do biomanufacturing right now. But really, it's with this idea that biology is the best chemist that exists. And chemists make stuff, and making stuff is manufacturing. And so for me, it's actually not that far of a logical leap to get into industrial biomanufacturing. How do we make stuff that's useful for people and of interest?

And then beyond that, I think the way we do that is through the power of working together and working collaboratively, which has gotten me to the point of working really at the intersection of industry, government, and academia, where when the three are really working together, you can pump out some really productive output. And for me right now, that's in industrial biomanufacturing.

Oh, fine. It's pretty kind of controversial. Biology was always my favorite subject in school. I always just saw it as it should be called like advanced or expert level chemistry. Yeah, totally. Get loads of biologists and some, yeah, pretty complaining there. Anyway, so can you give me an overview of BioMADE and its mission, which you've kind of done? What sets it apart from other biotech initiatives?

Sure. So I think maybe I'll start with a little bit of history. So BioMade is part of something called Manufacturing USA. And Manufacturing USA is this idea that the federal government will stand up some institutes, and I'll get to what I mean by an institute in just a second, stand up some institutes focused on a manufacturing area that is of national importance.

And so for BioMADE, in our case, in 2019 and 2020, at the end of the last Trump administration, there was this idea that we could really do something powerful with biology that's outside of the areas we typically think about, outside of healthcare.

And that led the federal government, and in our case, particularly the U.S. Department of Defense, to establish a manufacturing innovation institute to really drive U.S. growth in our manufacturing space. And the way we do that

is by bringing together a consortium of companies, primarily, with some universities, with some community colleges, with some nonprofit research institutes,

of which we right now have more than 325 of these organizations. We're across 38 states in the US. So we have a broad reach. Bring them all together and say, how do we turn all of this amazing biological science and engineering into economic output?

That creates profitable companies, more manufacturing jobs, more manufacturing in the U.S. so that it can serve both economic security and national security needs. And that is what Biomade's nonprofit mission is and what we're charged to do and what we've been doing for the last five years now.

Okay. So you're kind of like an incubator, for want of a better term. It's an unfortunate term considering the subject. Well, it means a lot of different things. So I think yes, and. I would say we're an incubator, and we're a manufacturing technology developer, and we're a curriculum and workforce developer, and we're a convener of...

even large organizations that really don't need incubation. For example, Cargill is the largest private company in the United States, is a member of BioWave, right? They don't need incubation. Pulling all of them together is really part of what we do and seeing if we can get more kind of bang for the buck

out the other end? Because Cargill, you know, the largest private company is sort of on one end of the spectrum, but we also have companies that are actually in other incubators. And how do we get them working together to really maximize the opportunity? And that is hard. That's not, you know, companies don't naturally do that. And that's okay, right? Like they're supposed to be focused on their corporate mission. But for BioMade,

It's saying, you know, what are some threads we can pull? Like, are there underlying technologies? Are there engineering challenges that we can face together that really aren't about a company's proprietary interests?

but actually raise the entire industry in a rising tide raises all boats kind of approach. And that's why these companies and other organizations engage with us and have engaged with us now for a little while. Okay. So members, the companies range widely, I guess, from, I don't know, biofuels to probably medicine. And I'm understanding correctly, foods and things.

Huge range. BioMade does not focus on health and medicine. So the one area that's out of scope for us is health and medicines. We don't have, for example, pharmaceutical companies in our membership, but we have companies that are focused on food products. We have companies that are focused on industrial chemicals, so commodity chemicals, specialty chemicals, polymers, plastics, fibers, fabrics, kind of a whole range. If you can make it with biology and it's for something other than health,

it counts, it's in for us. So it's really a wide range of economic sectors, but that all kind of boil down to saying, hey, we are using biology to make a thing that impacts whatever sector we're talking about. Cool. All right. It's kind of a broad scope, but I think I get the idea. Okay, then. So how does bio-industrial manufacturing contribute to both economic growth and sustainability? Can you share an example of a breakthrough in this space, if possible?

Please. Yeah, so it's a great question. I'm going to focus on an economic problem first, and that is using PLA, so polylactic acid, as an example. PLA, so lactic acid, is a monomer that can be polymerized to create polylactic acid, or PLA, which is a thermoplastic material. You can think about it being used in 3D printing.

It's also used in other types of plastics. It's a biodegradable material. And it's actually out. It's a $3 billion market, right? $2 billion, excuse me. It's a $2 billion market right now. And lactic acid also happens to be a product that biology is really good at making. So if you think about... I'm going to take a little detour, but I promise I'll come back. If you think about when you're working out, right?

and your muscles start to burn. And sometimes it's like, oh, there's a lactic acid buildup in your muscles. That's your body making lactic acid. It's the same lactic acid. It's the same molecule. But instead, we're using a biological system in a fermentation tank and pulling the lactic acid out and then polymerizing it to create this thermoplastic. So biology is really good at this. And so now pushing 25 years ago,

And a company called NatureWorks started up as a joint venture between Cargill and a Thai-based company to make PLA. And for the last 25 years, now we have been manufacturing PLA in the United States using corn that is grown on farms in the Midwest. And we've been doing that.

And I said, so PLA, I gave that as an example of something that biology is really good at making and something we've been able to do. Now, that was kind of a breakthrough, right? Like we were able to get into a market. We're able to do some things. We're able to compete with the chemicals industry more broadly, right? Like creating better chemical industry competition, which is a good thing. Now we're at a point where in the last 25 years, we in the biological sciences have generated so many powerful tools, right?

that you can manipulate a biological system to make almost anything. And that's why, you know, you pointed out just a few minutes ago that, hey, biomed's got a pretty broad mandate. You're talking about food, you're talking about fibers, you're talking about commodity chemicals, you're talking about specialty chemicals. Yeah, the reason we're able to talk about that today is we've now gotten to the point of evolving our technology—sorry, no pun intended—

to be able to manufacture those materials in laboratories. We can make them.

I'm going to come back to your second about BioMADE. The reason we exist is to get it from that laboratory scale into that $2 billion industry. How do we go from working in the lab to impacting a $2 billion industry? And that comes from core manufacturing technologies, core manufacturing approaches. And that's the opportunity today is to say, now, all right, we have this underlying technology

Instead of hitting just PLA or just a handful of chemicals, let's start tackling bigger markets, right? Let's start to $100 billion markets, trillion dollar markets. The global chemical industry is a $6 trillion industry. There's a lot of space to start tackling. How can we do that in a strategic way and in U.S. strategic interest? That's really, I mean, biology and living things

a masters of like you say producing stuff like lactic acid we've been doing it for billions of years um it's kind of interesting to come almost full circle from like synthetically making chemicals to re looking back at how biology does it to kind of replace this this fascinating i was getting excited that maybe i could uh sell labs my lactic acid when i'm at the gym i'd have to extract it anyway yeah indeed um

So the US government is investing heavily in biotechnology, as you mentioned. So how do these investments help maintain American, excuse me, competitiveness in the global bioeconomy? Yeah, so there have been incredible investments. So if you look back the last 30, 40 years, there have been billions of dollars in underlying biological sciences investment. That's sort of what I was just talking about.

Now there's this idea that we can impact the bioeconomy, really using biology to impact the economy. And that's what these investments are about today. So over the last five or seven years, it's really been about transitioning from that basic biological science to having the economic impact. These things don't happen on their own.

We've seen over and over again as technologies have developed that it often takes governmental support to get over the hump. Or sometimes it's called the valley of death. It's a little bit overused. But sometimes it takes governmental support. And I want to just take a moment to compare U.S. investment with global investment. Please. The U.S. has invested a few hundred million dollars in

over the last five or ish years, right? In the work that BioMate has been doing, which is amazing. Absolutely amazing. Comparatively, the European Commission for the last 20 years has been investing in the bioeconomy at the billions of euros, right? They are on their second 10 year plan right now.

So we're a little behind in that sense. We developed all the technology, but we're a little bit behind in that commercialization. If you look at China, China is investing billions and billions of dollars per year to create the infrastructure and drive corporate growth in industrial biomanufacturing. And so these U.S. investments are absolutely critical to keeping the U.S. able to compete.

And they often drive up and crowd in private investment. And that's what we see at BioMade. So we see, you know, when we take government funds, federal taxpayer dollars, and invest those in projects, those projects are almost always co-invested with private companies. Companies are putting in private money too. But it really just helps get over that kind of edge, right?

to push innovation and creativity and get to working on those underlying technical innovations that maybe they wouldn't work on when having to focus exclusively on quarterly earnings. But that taxpayer investment gets over that hump. And so that's why it's just absolutely critical for the U.S. to maintain this type of investment until the U.S. has a strong foothold in this manufacturing space

And then it becomes a lot of other technology areas that now see a different type of U.S. investment. Maybe the U.S. is a customer, right? Maybe the Department of Defense is buying products versus investing in the technologies that it develops, right? And that's okay. That's part of the evolution of a technology. We saw that with, for example, GPS. And that's kind of where we are today on driving these types of investments.

globally competitive investments. Gotcha. Are there any strings attached with that kind of investment from the government? Or it's just seen as a this is potential strategic resource in the future kind of? Well, I wouldn't call it string. I wouldn't use strings attached. But I would say, you know, government invests in things for specific reasons. So why is

the federal government investing in industrial biomanufacturing right now? Well, one is to maintain a globally competitive environment in an era of strategic technology competition. That certainly includes China, but it is not limited to China. And in these technology developments,

Someone is going to win. Someone is going to be there first. Someone is going to capture the relevant market share. And then it becomes awfully hard to catch up. And I can give an example of where we've seen this and are now dealing with it in kind of a tough way. And that's in the semiconductor industry, right? The U.S. developed the semiconductor industry, right? Yeah.

How many chips have we been manufacturing over the last 20 years? Not many, right? Because we allowed that manufacturing to get developed outside the US. And so our proposition in industrial biotech is, hey, we're at the early days. We have time to do this. If we do the right things right now, make the right decisions, make the right investments,

clear the regulatory landscape so that it's easier to actually develop manufacturing plants, then we are poised to win this battle. But it doesn't come on its own. And it takes a lot of work. And it takes a long time. And so it requires sustained investment.

but we're talking about the next 50 or 100 years. So what is 10 years when you're looking at 100-year long timeframes? Sure enough. Is there anywhere in particular the US is sort of leading, a global leader in this area? Or is it not something you can really quantify like that? It's a little hard to quantify, but I'll answer the question in a different way and say that...

We're talking about manufacturing products. Manufacturing products require some kind of feedstock. Right. Okay. Typically in biomanufacturing, the feedstock is some agricultural product. In this industry today, that is mostly corn dextrose. There is no place better in the world at growing corn than the United States. We grow a lot of corn really well. We have optimized this.

And we have a feedstocks advantage globally.

We have the corn. We have it growing all over the country, all over the industrial Midwest. And you can take that further and say, well, it's not just corn. You can also pull sugar beets into the mix. You can also pull other agricultural products into the mix. And so when you think about what the entire value chain looks like, from where you're getting the feedstock to selling it on some store shelf, the U.S. is pretty well positioned.

Where we're lacking right now is that middle step, that middle manufacturing step. If we get that right, the other pieces will fit together and help us be successful. Other countries are having to compete. Hey, where are you getting the feedstocks from? Where is the corn dextrose coming from? Where is the, right? And now don't get me wrong. Other countries have agricultural ecosystems, right?

But the U.S., based on our history and geography, gives us a pretty strong edge when it comes to ag. Is corn native to North America? Or am I completely mistaken there? So the corn we grow today is a heavily...

modified product, right? And I don't even mean modified using like fancy biotech. I mean modified over the last 200 years of agriculture. But yes, the answer is yes. But if I showed you two ears of, you know, an ear of maize that's from, you know, 300 years ago versus an ear of corn today, you may, you'll recognize it kind of, but you're going to say, Doug, you know,

Those aren't the same two things you're holding up. Modern corn is a mutant, right? Gigantic in comparison. That's a soundbite for you though. We have the corn. I like that. Okay, moving on. So what are some of the biggest challenges in scaling up bio-industrial innovations from lab to full-scale production?

Yeah, so I think there's two challenges I'll raise. The first is a technology challenge. And that is, I've mentioned a few times now, we focus really on this underlying biotechnology, biomanufacturing work in the biology. What we haven't spent so much time on

is the big tanks. How do we do big fermentation and purification, which in our industry we call downstream processing, to actually get the products out? And so developing new and more modern products

downstream processing technologies and integrating those in a data-rich environment is a real challenge. And this is where the chemical engineers shine, right? Chemical engineers are good at moving large amounts of liquid around and separating them. And that is an area of technology. And that's something Biomate has been focused on from the beginning. We've heard from industry that that's a real issue.

The second area is related to pilot and intermediate scale biomanufacturing infrastructure. Right now, in order to scale up your product, you have to go through a series of steps that get you out of a laboratory environment and say, hey, how can I ferment and then purify enough material for a customer to potentially validate, to validate that technology? So if you imagine sort of a craft brewery,

size effort. We don't have those in the US at the scale we need. We don't have enough of them for the companies that need to scale up. And so what we see right now is companies going overseas, going to Europe, going to Mexico, going to other countries to scale their technologies, because we just don't have the steel in the ground to be able to do it.

Biomade has put forth an ambitious initiative, a $1.5 billion effort to establish a network of pilot and intermediate scale biomanufacturing facilities to try to help solve that problem. We have a facility going up in Minnesota right now. We have two other facilities that are slated to be announced this year and

that is starting to solve the problem, but kind of coming back to investment and drive, we need to see the investment and drive continue because manufacturing problems take a long time to solve. And that continued engagement is going to be required to see it through. Okay. So what's the main problem then? Is it just the cost of labor in the US or regulation or lack of skill or all of the above? Yes. Yes. And, um, right.

Yeah, the part of the problem is, is, is, is simply, and I know we're on a podcast, so I'm simply in air quotes. We've not had a strategic national approach to solving this problem. There are regulatory issues.

There are some regulatory issues that are at the state level, which means there are 50 different versions of the regulatory issue. There are major workforce challenges. Companies have a hard time hiring. We don't have integrated workforce training programs. Another thing Biomate is trying to help solve.

We don't have necessarily companies organized as well as they could be to be giving clear messages to the public about the opportunity space here, right? It's our job. We have to sell what we're doing and make it really clear. Like, what is the public benefit that's going to come out of this? Public benefit can be massive if we articulate it right.

And help people understand and bring them along and set expectations that it takes a few years, it takes a little time. And those all of that kind of together with the manufacturing technology challenges, the developing of that underlying technology, all that's got to come together.

in order for us to ultimately be successful. Okay, all right. I mean, one of the strengths of the US is the fact is those are different states that in theory can compete with each other, right, for doing things like this. Is there any particular state, in your opinion, that is ahead of the game compared to the others?

Oh, see, I run a national institute and asking me to pick a state that's better than the others is a danger. It's like saying, you know, pick your favorite company, pick your favorite. So I avoid that. But what I will say is that there are legitimate opportunities in almost every state in industrial biomanufacturing. Unlike the...

commodity chemicals industry that is more localized, say on like the Gulf Coast and in places where large ships can dock with crude oil, biomanufacturing can be done in a much more distributed manner. And so you can imagine building up biomanufacturing hubs, you know, for example, in areas where there's a lot of corn.

Let's do our manufacturing co-located. And that's already happening. There are actually a few examples of that, but we can do that 10x, 100x the scale that we're doing it to make an impact on the chemicals industry. And so for us, when we talk to state governments, when we talk to our member companies in given states, what we say is, what are the strengths of your state? Forget about biomanufacturing. Tell me what your strengths are.

And then because biomanufacturing is poised to impact almost every sector of the economy, we can say, okay, you guys are super strong at fabrics and textiles. Let's talk about how we build up a bioeconomy that is providing the inputs for a biobased nylon because you guys use a lot of nylon already.

So let's do that here. Right. And that makes sense in one place, whereas in another place, it might say, hey, we have a huge national security component here. We have a lot of defense. The defense industrial base is strong here. Maybe we're focused on munitions. Hey, how bioindustrial manufacturing can help them with munitions precursors. Let's do that.

And you can do that almost anywhere. Makes sense. But is it like kind of a natural, how do I say it, kind of handicap for, say, somewhere, a state or an area that produces a lot of corn as a feedstock? You need a lot of land for that, obviously, to grow the stock. So does that kind of limit how much the industry can grow there, develop there, pardon me?

Not really because the places that have a lot of land to grow corn or grow any large agriculture, they just have a lot of land. They have land to spare. So you don't need all of the land to grow. And in reality, a manufacturing facility in a manufacturing ecosystem can really help a rural environment

By saying, hey, not everyone is going to be a corn farmer. What are the other jobs that are going to support an agricultural environment? If you look at the farmer and grower statistics out there, virtually every family farm in America has to have at least one second job that's outside of farming.

And now that could be supporting a local community. You could be a teacher, you could be a physician or a nurse. You could pick some of those. But if you have now a chemical manufacturing industry that's co-located to that, you create an additional pull both for selling the corn.

and an additional demand for jobs that are different than the ones that are in that farming environment. So you create some sort of sustainability and safety in an economic sense in those types of rural environments. And that's really a powerful opportunity. That's pretty cool. So you could see like a reversal from like industrial revolution, people moving from cities to rural areas if it kicks off, right? You could. Yeah.

That'd be amazing. You know, it's interesting, right? We talk a lot about AI right now and have been, and people are really concerned about AI taking jobs, right?

I'm concerned about that too. I'm not an expert in AI. That's not my area. I'm the chemist who does biomanufacturing. But then I look over at the things we're doing and are like, we're manufacturing products here. It's going to take people.

It's going to build out a manufacturing economy that is going to not only impact the farmers on the front end, but also we're talking about, you know, we talked about PLA. No one buys PLA. PLA gets sold to another company to manufacture a product that you buy. Well, that company needs employees too.

And so you really imagine a value chain that is supporting workers through manufacturing, and that can happen right alongside the AI revolution in a way that can be quite positive for the economy. Absolutely. I think it's called creative destruction, I think is the term some economists use for that kind of thing. So yeah, overall, it's a good thing. We'll see. Yeah.

Okay, so you mentioned BioMade focuses on sustainability. What role do bio-based products play in reducing environmental impact? And how close are we to mainstream adoption? That's a mouthful. So I think those are two different questions a little bit. I would say I'm going to focus first sort of on the mainstream adoption. For mainstream adoption, I think the big question is, well, what product are you talking about? One of the challenges that we face is that

you can use industrial biomanufacturing to make a whole variety of products. I've talked a lot about PLA, so I'll switch to a different example. I'll switch to biobased nylon. Well, nylon's already mainstream adopted. And biobased nylon is really about taking an opportunity that exists in an existing industry and saying, hey, we have a way to make it

in a potentially more sustainable way and in a cost competitive way. And so at the end of the day, really this is about selling products that are cost competitive. Companies that have been interested in sustainability have generally learned that there is no premium for green. That doesn't really exist, right? And we're talking about commodity and specialty chemicals that have relatively low margins, right?

which means there's really no premium for grain. But the thing about it for us is that doesn't really need to matter. You need to understand the techno-economics, right? Understand your technology and how it fits with the economics of what you're doing. You need to perform a lifecycle analysis and understand what is the lifecycle of your product. And then you can go compete alongside the broader market.

And that all really has to happen in getting companies in the mindset of that level of competition. And then it's essentially ready for mainstream adoption. The barriers, you actually asked the question about barriers already, right? And I brought up downstream processing and infrastructure. Some of the barriers are just how fast can we go, right? What are the blockers for companies? The blockers to some of these mainstream adoption is, you know, if it takes me an extra six months to get into a pilot plant,

to try to scale my product, well, that's six months slower than my thing's going to be adopted. And so how do you bring down those barriers to let companies move fast? Not all companies are going to succeed, but some are. And those are what build into much more mainstream companies

adoption in the broader manufacturing industry. Fair enough answer. Let's switch in tracks a little bit then. What are some of the most exciting bio-based alternatives to traditional manufacturing materials that you're aware of that could revolutionize industries? You can give us some examples. Yeah, so I'll give a couple of examples. I'll start with ones that are maybe more conventional and then go to a little less conventional. So I'll start with food.

There is a company that we work with called Super Brewed Foods that is manufacturing the most nutrient-dense food product ever to have existed. Okay. Yeah, that's right. It's sort of, you say that and you have like a reaction, right? Oh my gosh, which doesn't even mean. Well, it turns out you can manufacture...

certain products that really closely resemble what human nutritional needs are, both across calories, but also the other nutrients, vitamins and minerals, to get to a super high density. Now, why does this matter? Why is this exciting? Why am I even talking about this? Well, it's probably not what you're going to eat on a random Tuesday. But

If there is a natural disaster and we all of a sudden are saying, hey, how are we going to get food to people? Well, that starts to become pretty important. And weight matters. Nutrient density matters a lot. If you start talking about the Department of Defense and military needs, how much stuff are you carrying in your pack? Right. If I can carry a...

Two weeks worth of food at the same weight as one week worth of food the week. That is enormous, right? That is astronomically better. And so that is a really exciting opportunity that is, you know, the kind of thing you don't want to ever need. But when you need it, you really want it to be there. Yeah, for submarines or going to space, that would be revolutionary.

Space is a huge space is a huge one. You know, food products in space and then for long duration space missions, how can you recycle food products, right, so that you're able to actually make it to Mars, without having to carry everything you need to get to and from Mars turns out weight matters a lot in space as you just pointed as you just pointed out. So that's, that's a really cool example.

There are other examples that are exciting. One is on natural rubber. Right now, as you and your listeners may know, the vast majority of the global natural rubber supply comes from Southeast Asia, from rubber trees. For starters, it is a fragmented and fairly risky supply chain coming from one part of the world right now.

But there's a more sort of existential crisis, and that is rubber trees have a disease that is slated to wipe them out completely. I don't know the exact timing, but they are at serious risk of not existing, of going extinct. And it turns out natural rubber is really important to our needs across the world.

And so we have projects ongoing at BioMade right now using alternative plant products to get to natural rubber. One that is out there fairly publicly these days is on the TK dandelion. Yes, I did say dandelion. It's not exactly the dandelion that you are annoyed at in your garden, but

but it's not so far off either. But it turns out there's a species of dandelion, the tiki dandelion, that has these really long roots. And those roots create a rubber that you can extract that performs an awful lot like natural rubber from rubber trees. And so rubber trees really only grow in Southeast Asia. We're not going to be growing those in the US. That's where they grow. Also, this disease problem is not something that's likely to get solved.

dandelions can grow a lot of places. And so we're able to say, hey, we have a whole different way of using a natural product to solve a global rubber shortage. Just a super short story on that. Turns out that that type of work started in World War II. There was a serious concern about natural rubber shortages for obvious reasons.

And work sort of continued for a little while, but then kind of died off because the war was over. And it happened at just such a this like barely even happening low level for decades and decades and decades until more recently it came back up more as an issue. And it's one of those examples of you don't necessarily know when you have a win when you have it.

But at some point, you start to look back in history and are like, well, we were doing that 70 years ago. Let's really pick that up. And how do we apply today's modern technology to make it go faster?

And so natural rubber is one that is a pretty exciting opportunity. There are also, you know, I mentioned a few times where we are a Department of Defense started institute. There are some really exciting defense and national security related products that can be made with biomanufacturing that will support sort of core national security needs.

For obvious reasons, we don't talk about those on podcasts like this in a lot of detail. But it is important to recognize that that opportunity space exists. And it's one where biomanufacturing may be new in the defense and national security context, but new and emerging technologies are not. They often come from

core national security questions. And that is something that we're able to navigate and really help bolster the industry, both in a commercial sense and in a national security sense.

on an ongoing basis. Okay. We're talking mutant soldiers, are we? Super soldiers? We are not talking mutant soldiers. We are not talking about human performance. We are not talking about affecting people's biology in any way, but we are talking about, let's just call them hard defense capabilities and products that warfighters need. Only playing. Yeah.

We're running short of time, so I'll skip forward a bit. So looking ahead the next couple of decades, what do you see as the most transformative innovations in bio-industrial manufacturing? Yeah. So I'm going to give you a little bit of an unconventional answer. Oh, please. I think the most transformational innovations are really going to be transformations in business models. Okay.

We have a lot of the technology, and don't get me wrong, there's going to be some amazing technology innovations in the next two decades that will be transformative for the industry. But we need to understand in the industrial biomanufacturing universe that the business model is as important as the technology. The goal is to manufacture a product,

where your cost is lower than the selling price. That is the definition of a profitable manufacturing company. And right now, it is really hard to get that right. It's really hard for a lot of reasons. We will innovate in technology to bring that manufacturing cost down, but we will also innovate in business models. And novel business models will also make that more efficient.

And that efficiency will allow industrial biomanufacturing to be more successful. And some of that comes from some of the efforts that BioMADE has ongoing, particularly our pilot plant network, where an example is that if a company can get into a pilot plant network facility six months earlier than they could today,

Well, that's six months less wages. They have to be paying their staff while they're waiting because they got to keep their people, right? Or it allows their first product to fail without having burned through so much money that they go out of business and they get a few shots on goal. Those types of things are enormous. And that in the next five to 15 years is going to be absolutely critical to the success of this industry. Yeah. Fail fast, fail cheap, they say, don't they?

It's the best way. Yes, absolutely. And then in pushing to drive efficiency, you could likely find new innovations, things you never thought of before, right? You process it. God knows, yeah. And then get those elevated to the point where you can share them, right? Some proof efficiencies are going to be really important for a company in their proprietary manufacturing technology. Fine.

Right. But some of those are in the rising tide raises all boats category. And those are the ones that we're really interested in saying, hey, like, let's supercharge this industry by getting those out there in a way that's going to be more successful than it would be with everything closed up. Absolutely. Yeah.

Okay, then last question. If there were one key message you'd like to give to policymakers, industrial leaders and the public in general to understand about the bio economy, what would it be? Great question. Developing a manufacturing sector takes time and long-term dedication to winning.

At the end of the day, we are talking about doing something that is not going to get resolved in one year or one quarter. We are talking about developing a globally competitive industry, and it's going to take several years in order for that success to really manifest itself. Building a foundation is hard, and it's

ugly a lot of the time. And it often feels like progress isn't being made until all of a sudden it is. And so sticking with it in terms of our need to win is really what's required. And I'm, you know, going back to some of the things I said, I am super excited to

that we in the last five years from starting in 2020 to now have been able to build this foundation. And it's really at this point what the next five years looks like in order to start to see some of the material benefits for industrial biomanufacturing in an era of global technology competition.

I see. A little bit cliche, but came to mind then. It's like, you need to plant the seeds now for the trees that you'll never see the shade of in the future kind of mentality, right? Or not. I'm going to pull that even further and say, when you plant a seed, the roots grow first and you don't see them. Yeah, that's better. I like that one. I'll steal that. Great. That's everything then. Is there anything else you'd like to add that you think is important we haven't mentioned, Doug?

No, Chris, this has been a great conversation. I appreciate the questions and the opportunity. Look forward to driving this industry forward from here. Fantastic. With that then, Doug, thank you for your time. That was very, very interesting. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Our pleasure. Also, don't forget to subscribe to IE Plus for premium insights and exclusive content.