Green cities with new agtech-culture

Program:

• Set-up the very first microalgae agtech farm in a roof in Paris 18e (current partnership signed with SAEMES) and create an Health & Nutrition center of excellence
• Develop SuperFood recipes based on vegetal proteins, in partnership with French Grands Chefs and Food experts, led by Mr Jean-Christophe Michelet, 2019 worldwide best “confiturier” award
• Build a Biotech4Good exportable business model

Our unique biotechnology enables to exploit non-arable lands in densely population areas while fixing CO2 emissions. We aim to provide the future of protein with our mass-cultured microalgae strains. The biomass high protein content as well as the same proteins’ profile with a high amount of essential amino acids makes it an interesting vegetal protein resource. 

Our project goal is to provide a sustainable vegetal protein notably to the regions facing urbanization challenges due to rapid growth.

Planctonid is a biotech-agtech-cleantech company, developing innovative technologies that enable reducing significantly carbon footprint, cleaning water (N&P elements) and nurturing the world.

This company is developing new business models based first sustainability criteria that secure and reinforce conditions to respect and secure Life. 

Where our solutions play: SDG 2, 6, 11, 13, 14 & 17. 

The environmental impact of our project is to provide a solution to valorize non-arable land for food production while providing a bioremediation service with the massive capture of atmospheric CO2. 

Our Key Performance Indicators for sustainable agriculture:

• No consumption of water w/i our production system

Our commitments:

• Sustainable response to climate change: 1ha of our photo-bioreactors equivalent to 181ha of forest
• New agriculture production model, in 3 dimensions, enabling urban agriculture development
• Develop « super food » recipes, based on microalgae (source of proteins and EAA) 
• Promote sustainable and exportable business model, global biotech4Good 
• Fight against chronic undernutrition (see NGO program in attachments)
• Re industrialize locally owing to Planctonid’s biotech farms

BIOTECH:

Planctonid is recipient to the COP 25 Start-Up Europe Awards

We are a micro-algae production specialist with innovative designed bioengineering processes and with a stock of productive micro-algae strains. 

Unicity: our technologies provide a global unique competitive advantage: our productivity ratio, - at least 5 times superior than “state of the art” companies such as Exxon Mobil or Mitsubishi, enables cost effective economic models.

Proprietary bioprocess technology provides the advantages of:  

• Easing the dismounting of individual bioreactor arrays from other adjacent arrays so that operation does not need to be interrupted
• Land use efficiency with rack structural load configuration that let us stack vertically multilevel arrays high
• Individual flat-plate array designs that limit biofouling accumulation and hence save on the labor
• Progressively controlling the biomass density while using a constant agitation rate in continue on the line of multilevel arrays
• Modular Line-based Production system that combine different microalgae, each on different line.

FOOD: a new approach to educate and disrupt our habits

Planctonid micro-algae are rich in protein containing essential amino acids, Omega 3/6 lipids, antioxidant pigments.

Grand Chefs are mobilized to develop a nouvelle cuisine based on microalgae w tastes and sensorial analyses.

Our solutions are addressing the main points of COP21:

• significantly reducing Carbon footprint;
• developing a new agriculture, without soils contamination, nor fertilizers, and reducing by x20 the needed land surface
• enabling urban and sustainable agriculture in a costs efficient way
• providing ecological vegetal proteins in cities, with limited transport contamination
• creating new jobs, with a potential strong focus on women employment as farmer in countries where there is no right of lands for women.

Planctonid's "urban farms" respond to the challenges posed by climate change and massive urbanization, within the framework of a circular economy that respects the health of city dwellers and the environment. We are developing a new form of local urban agriculture, above ground, in three dimensions (3D), combining intensive production of micro-algae with very high protein added value, infinitesimal water consumption with massive CO2 capture, reducing "the effect Greenhouse ". 

Citizens' benefits:

• Develop a new agriculture in an urban environment, with a reduced surface area and negligible water consumption 

• Produce micro-algae biomass and create a circular, local and positive economy and new job in towns

• Capture CO2 massively 

• Protect the health of city dwellers 

• Provide higher satisfaction of citizens and officials.

1 - Green Cities:

Anne Hidalgo, President of the C40: “Reinventing the city is an unprecedented global competition organized by the C40 to promote carbon neutral and resilient urban regeneration. " 

Our urban biotech farms allow us to meet the health, environmental and nutritional challenges of cities.

2 - NUTRITION:

Proteins are a major issue for the planet. Microalgae have been proposed as a source of protein and long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCn-3PUFAs).

We'll develop recipes for the food industries to UPGRADE industrial products’ offer by providing a gluten-free, allergens-free food that is environmentally friendly.

BIOTECH:

Planctonid is recipient to the COP 25 Start-Up Europe Awards.

Unicity:

• Biotechnology-wise,PE biotechnology is proven
  • We benefit from 35 years of researches and IPs on microalgae cultural and industrial processes
  • Our technical team has 15 years experience in industrial production 

• Planctonid Environnement technologies provide a global unique competitive advantage: our productivity ratio, - at least 5 times superior than “state of the art” companies such as Exxon Mobil or Mitsubishi, enables cost effective economic models.

PE proprietary bioprocess technology provides the advantages of:  

• Easing the dismounting of individual bioreactor arrays from other adjacent arrays so that operation does not need to be interrupted on the same line for maintenance
• Land use efficiency with rack structural load configuration that let us stack vertically multilevel arrays high
• Individual flat-plate array designs that limit biofouling accumulation and hence save on the labor needed to clean the arrays at interval
• Progressively controlling the biomass density while using a constant agitation rate in continue on the line of multilevel arrays
• Modular Line-based Production system that combine different microalgae, each on different line.

FOOD: a new approach to educate and disrupt our habits

PE micro-algae bank are rich in protein containing essential amino acids, Omega 3/6 lipids, antioxidant pigments, oligosaccharides and more.

A Grand Chefs team is mobilized to develop a nouvelle cuisine based on microalgae, led by Jean-Christophe Michelet, 2019 double world champion of the “confituriers”. 

Tastes and sensorial analyses will be developed by French expert, in partnership w industrial food leading companies.

Disruptive process of microalgae production based on 5 axes

1 - MicroAlgae - best biotech selection:

•Choice of species, less than 5.0 μmØ. Reproductive cycle between 6 and 12 hours.

2 - Best photobioreactors design:

•Better light availability
•Resistance to environmental conditions.
•Optimized performance. Modular and stackable design for space optimization. Adaptable to any vertical surface,walls and facades.

•Operations 365 days/ 24 hours

•Anti-seismic and designed to without and adverse weather conditions.
•Operations with natural, artificialor mixed lighting.

3 - Leveraging in real time IoT and Data usage:

•Innovative IoT sensors for data gathering and transmission
•The Intelligent Decision Support platform, able to control valve actuators or light level and quality controllers to respond autonomously in real time to changes. 

4 - Use of plug-in modular racks. 

A new model, tried and tested, will be used in the installation to offer maximum performance. The great novelties of the model that have no precedent in the industrial world are the following:

• Reactor arrangement in a rack
• Horizontal connectable racks
• General Rack that allows stacking Racks at different heights
• Use of an additional lower circuit to improve the hydraulics in each rack.
• Use of a vertical cylinder to improve hydraulics in general. 

5 - Evaluation of the use of different optical steps.

In general, reactors with a homogeneous optical path are used in the installations. However, in this installation, the suitability of using reactors with different optical passages that favor a recovery of the species after the extraction, is evaluated.

Two first biotech farms implemented in Spain and France.

Our Key Performance Indicators are:

• Carbon offset: 1tonne of microalgae biomass = 2t of immobilized CO2, 181 ha of forest
• Productivity:
  • Production of 1tonne of biomass for a surface of 1m2 yearly
  • 1ha useful between 400 to 1000tonnes of biomass yearly (1000 times more productive than conventional agriculture (ex vs. The most productive crop in the world is undoubtedly American corn: 30tonnes per ha)
• Nutrition and energy:
  • 1tonne of biomass gives 600kg of proteins and 250kg of oils
  • Energy for our food: our microalgae biomass 5500Kcal / kg
  • Microalgae biomass means 60% vegetal proteins

Our solutions are addressing the main points of COP21:

• significantly reducing Carbon footprint;
• developing a new agriculture, without soils contamination, nor fertilizers, and reducing by x20 the needed land surface
• enabling urban and sustainable agriculture in a costs efficient way
• providing ecological vegetal proteins to nurture the world owing to disruptive biotechnologies
• creating new jobs, with a potential strong focus on women employment as farmer in countries where there is no right of lands for women. Planctonid Environment's "urban farms" respond to the challenges posed by climate change and massive urbanization, within the framework of a circular economy that respects the health of city dwellers and the environment. We are developing a new form of local urban agriculture, above ground, in three dimensions (3D), combining intensive production of micro-algae with very high protein added value, infinitesimal water consumption with massive CO2 capture, reducing "the effect Greenhouse".

Steps of the change management:

1 - First agtech farm in Paris roof as a showroom of the new model

2 - Transforming climate change into Grande Gastronomie.

3 - Education about smartFood based on Microalgae substitution to traditional  cooking for targeted countries, with the support of luminaries "les Grands Chefs Cuisiniers"

4 - Open a center of Cooking, Nutrition and Health

5 - Focusing on undernutrition issues of babies, notably in Africa due to the lack of proteins

6 - Demonstrating results both on Food and Climate Impact with defined KPIs

7 - Demonstrating the business model by results

8 - Partnering with both Cities leading Food and Health local players to roll-out the program globally 

KEY OUTPUTS for LONG RUN:

1 - Providing VEGETAL PROTEIN GLOBALLY in all continents and cities

2 - NEGATIVE CARBON BALANCESHIP, efficiently fighting for Climate Change

3 - Local production in Cities, and new agtech culture globally, new job in cities

4 - A MORE RESILIANT WORLD when sanitary crisis

We have not so far developed a agtech farm in cities roof. The first unit is planned in H2 2021.

However we have in place two production units:

- in a rural area in Spain, producing 2 tonnes per year for R&D on nutrition;

- in an industrial area in the Nantes Saint Nazaire harbor, with a circular economy model, cleaning industrial waters and providing microalgae feed for aquaculture - 30 tonnes production in 2021.

Regarding urban agtech farms:

Our urban farm business model a production of 110 tonnes of microalgae biomass in 2022 in Paris. This represents +50% of the French national production and enables to massively serve the French restaurants networks and start to introduce in the French market new smartfood products at industrial scale, such as oil rich in Omega or vegetable meat.

In 5 years time, we aim at diffusing our solution at global scale, with at least first plants in place in 20 mega-cities. 

Our goal is to implement biotech farms and associated nouvelle cuisine, recipes and cooking training, in all the biggest cities in the world, notably in emerging countries.

Each 1000m2 on non-arable ground (2000 Planctonid Evironnement’s photo-bioreactors), we will set-up a biotech farm and produce annually 50 tonnes of microalgae biomass (60% proteins).

We will begin by Paris city, as the agreement with the administration is signed and Paris will be global showroom to export the model.

Business rationals are:

• Green-Tech Sustainable Investment, Climate focus
• French Agri-Tech based on MicroAlgae and PhotoBioReactors farms
• Biomass2Protein, CO2 Sequestration, Zero-Carbon Neutral.
• Three-Phase Investors Program with three projects on Paris Parking Rooftops slated from 2020-2024
• NB on CSR: 
  • 5% of biomass production donation to social associations, in order to support more fragile citizens (vegetal proteins)
  • Training cooking programs for mothers based on microalgae use. 

KPIs:

In 2021:

• First urban agtech farm implemented in Paris with proven business model.
• Microalgae biomass production of 5 tonnes.

In 2025:

• Urban agtech farm model scaled-up, with implementation in 20 cities globally
• First footprint in India, Indonesia and West African countries
• Microalgae biomass production of 2000 tonnes
• Microalgae based recipes supported by Grands Chefs communities
• 5 smart food new products at industrial scale with leading food companies partnerships

To initiate our program, we are facing two main challenges :

1. Funding : find a Seed fund of 2m$ for the first unit in Paris Roof;
2. Education: develop the partnerships with food companies to develop new microalgae based products within 24 months.

To roll-out the program, we are anticipating five barriers:

1. Markets education: beyond France, where the initiative is highly supported by Grands Chefs, there is a need of education on food habits changes and sustainable business models;
2. Administration approvals: each country has its own administrative process in order to implement farms in the cities - that will require resources and new skills for the company;
3. Local ecosystem: in each country, we ll develop an industrial set-up to exploit microalgae agtech farms locally and train people to these new jobs;
4. Standardization: we will set-up processes and norms to implement and to run the production units globally;
5. Funding: only if the four first points are validated and well defined, we could scale up and properly finance the program.

NB:

- The engineering part is already anticipated with a global agreement with an international European engineering group that will support the operations globally for the implementation phase, EGIS group.

Here are the proposed action plan for each of the five barriers:

1. Markets education: 
   1. Network of Grands Chefs, who are going to elaborate new recipes and products based on microalgae;
   2. Nutritionists to score microalgae benefit and recommend the proteins doses for babies/children growth;
   3. Creation of Health and Nutrition center;
   4. Global and local partnerships with food & feed companies for new products introduction.
2. Administration approvals: 
   1. first case as the standard for all cities;
   2. involving influencers (President of the C40, etc.);
   3. Standard toolkit for cities. 
3. Local ecosystem: 
   1. Partner with local players to develop the industries;
   2. Training units for these new jobs;
   3. Partnerships with academics & universities locally.
4. Standardization: 
   1. we will set-up processes and norms to implement and to run the production units globally;
   2. we will look for international certifications of our solutions.
5. Funding: 
   1. MIT Solve program is kindly requested!
   2. Other innovation programs will be approached for the first units;
   3. Program financial vehicule to create for private investors, in order to scale up globally.