How Microculture Manufacturers Develop Advanced Technologies

According to estimates of the international analytical company Mordor Intelligence, the global market of starter crops today is $ 1.39 billion, and by 2031 will reach $ 1.83 billion with an average annual growth rate of 5.6%. More than half of it, 55.6%, accounted for dairy products. The market is highly concentrated: two-thirds of sales are controlled by companies from Europe and the United States.

The volume of the Russian market of sourdough consumption by the dairy industry, according to a study by the consulting company Strategy Partners (at the disposal of the editorial office), in 2022 in physical terms amounted to 775 tons. According to analysts, by 2030 it will grow to 1 million tons. At the same time, until 2022, Russia did not experience a shortage in sourdoughs - they came from international suppliers. According to Strategy Partners, importers, mainly European companies, accounted for 90% of the market. After the departure of key players, Russian producers faced interruptions in the supply of starter crops. According to Dmitry Fursayev, the general director of the Uglich Biofactory, a domestic producer of sourdough, the withdrawal from the Russian market Novonesis (the company was formed in 2023 through the merger of two Danish biotech giants - Novozymes and Chr. Hansen). - RBC) threatened 40% of the output of dairy products.

“The scale of the task is evident from the gap in the collections. Russian banks of industrial strains have thousands of samples, while Novonesis has about 50,000, says Dmitry Fursayev. According to him, the problem is not only in quantity: Western collections are becoming inaccessible, and domestic, created in the USSR, partially lost or do not meet modern requirements.

The formation of our own biobank is a strategic task for the industry. The national project “Technological support of bioeconomy” was launched in 2026. Its key task is to unite science, business and the state to create a Russian school of industrial microbiology. Own production of “live” starters should ensure the industry stability and technological independence. The national project provides for the allocation of subsidies to microbiologists covering up to 70% of the costs of research and development work on the development and production of enzymes. Manufacturers of biocomponents can also count on preferential financing: for example, apply for loans from the Industrial Development Fund in the amount of 5 million to 1 billion rubles. at 3-5% per annum.

Innovation with freezing

Domestic production capacities in the sourdough market until recently were represented by two main enterprises - in the Moscow region and Uglich, but their production potential was not enough to fully cover the needs of the industry, says Dmitry Fursayev. In 2026, the situation begins to change, he notes: “Soyuzsnab Group of Companies launched the first Russian production of cryogranulated starters in the Moscow region and became the third manufacturer in the world to master this technology based on deep freezing with the formation of granules in a low-temperature environment. This approach increases the stability and maintains the high metabolic activity of strains, which is important for the quality of products of the dairy and pharmaceutical industries.” The development of such advanced technologies is necessary to create a full-fledged bioeconomy, emphasizes Dmitry Fursayev.

The project for the production of frozen starter crops is implemented by the company "Green Lines", a member of the Soyuzsnab Group of Companies. The first production plant produced only dry leaven. In 2024, the company received a preferential loan of 110 million rubles from the Moscow Region Industry Development Fund to expand production. In the autumn of 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Moscow Region provided the company with a subsidy of 35.5 million rubles to reimburse the costs of research and development work.

The state support of the project allowed to expand the production and research base of the enterprise and move to the industrial introduction of its own crop production technology, says Elena Rusanova, head of the Research Center for Food Industry and Pharmaceuticals Soyuzsnab. “This is not just about mastering foreign cryogranulation technology, but about creating our own technological platform that allows us to manage the characteristics of culture at each stage of production,” she said. For the biotech industry, this is of fundamental importance today: in the production of starters, competitiveness is determined by how effectively the manufacturer is able to work with microorganisms at all stages.

According to Elena Rusanova, the production technology is based on two key scientific developments of Soyuzsnab Group. The first is its own nutrient environment for the cultivation of microorganisms. Their composition is selected taking into account the physiology of specific strains and allows to significantly increase the efficiency of biomass accumulation and obtain cultures with high metabolic activity. The second development is its own protective environments and compositions, which are used in the stages of concentration, freezing and subsequent storage of crops. Their task is to preserve the viability and functional activity of cells after processing. As a result, in terms of the efficiency of growing certain groups of microorganisms, the enterprise has reached the level of the world's leading producers, and in a number of characteristics the obtained crops surpass existing foreign analogues, says Elena Rusanova.

The strain factory

At the end of 2026 - early 2027 in the Yaroslavl region on the territory of the Uglich Cheese and Dairy Plant, the first stage of the Uglich Biofactory will begin full-fledged work, claiming the status of one of the largest sourdough producers in the country. The enterprise with an area of 6.4 thousand square meters. m creates under the national project "Technological support of bioeconomy" agro-industrial holding "Agranta". Its design capacity at the first stage - 32-35 tons of lyophilized (dry) starters per year - will cover up to 30% of the needs of the Russian market in this product, and in the future - up to 50%, says the head of research and development of the Uglich biofactory Irina Mozgova. While the Uglich biofactory produces experimental batches of sourdough, which are already used in production. Thus, the Uglich Cheese and Dairy Plant with their help produced several batches of Russian cheese.

In the future, it is planned to launch the second stage for the production of deep-frozen starters. The production will allow considering the possibility of exporting these products, which will serve to fulfill the tasks of the national project to form Russia's technological leadership in the field of biotechnology, says Irina Mozgova.

At the same time, the Uglich Biofactory should become not only one of the leading manufacturers of biocomponents, but also a research platform that will combine the achievements of scientists and the capabilities of industry. The scientific and technological center of the enterprise, which is created in partnership with leading scientific organizations of the country, will occupy about 2 thousand square meters. It will include four laboratories: genetic, bioinformation analysis, screening of strains and sourdough creation, as well as a pilot workshop. About 40 scientists are expected to work at the center.

The creation of a scientific center will allow to comprehensively solve the main tasks of Russian manufacturers - to develop technologies for creating starters with productive and valuable properties and organize their industrial production, says Irina Mozgova. The key task of scientists will be to participate in the formation and scaling of the national biobank of strains, since without a wide genetic diversity it is impossible to create starters for different types of products and production conditions, she explains. World leaders have about 50 thousand strains, which is orders of magnitude higher than the volume of biobanks of Russian organizations. At the Uglich biofactory, a biobank with about 300 strains with plans for significant expansion has been created.

It is also necessary to develop competencies in the field of traditional and modern breeding to isolate strains with high production potential: phage resistance (the ability to resist viruses), stop effect (the ability to stop acid formation at the right time), certain properties for the formation of taste, smell and texture of the product, notes Irina Mozgova. Another important task, according to her, is the development of “twin leaven” with identical technological properties, but different sensitivity to bacteriophages. This competence allows you to quickly replace one starter with another in case of phage infection at the plant, without changing the technological process.

Scientists go to the factory

The path from fundamental research to an industrial product is complex and, as a rule, quite long, says Leonid Nikulin, CEO of the Novosibirsk biotech company Vector-BiAlgam. “Our company knows him well in practice. We grew up from a state scientific center and inherited a serious scientific base and fundamental developments. But in order to turn this potential into a popular industrial product - domestic starter crops for the food industry, probiotic preparations and products - it was necessary to create a full-fledged production and engineering infrastructure, develop technological regulations, a quality control system and train specialists capable of working at the intersection of science and production, he explains.

The company produces sourdoughs, lysates (products of the breakdown of the cell walls of probiotic microorganisms), dry biomass of bacteria, bioadditives and develops technologies for creating fermented milk products with probiotic effect. The capacity of the plant allows producing up to 40 kg of dry biomass, 10 liters of liquid biomass and 500 thousand capsules with probiotics per month.

The difficulty is that the scientific result must be checked, adapted to real production conditions, ensure reproducibility, economic efficiency and the possibility of scaling, notes Leonid Nikulin. What works well in the laboratory is not always automatically transferred to industrial production. When scaling, process parameters, raw material properties, equipment requirements change, he explains. Therefore, numerous tests, refinement of the technology and its subsequent validation are necessary. In addition, an industrial product must meet economic requirements: be stable in quality, reproducible from batch to batch and competitive in cost.

“That is why we consider it important to develop the interaction of science, education and business. We need specialists who understand not only the scientific side of biotechnology, but also the specifics of industrial production, says Leonid Nikulin. It is very important that the national project helps to solve this problem today, creating additional opportunities for interaction between science, education and business, supporting the introduction of scientific developments and the development of technological competencies. It is especially important that this work should be systematic in nature and the linkage “school – university – scientific organization – enterprise” would become part of a sustainable educational and production system.

For more than a decade, Vector-BiAlgam, together with the administration of the Novosibirsk region and Biotechnological Lyceum No. 21, has been building a seamless trajectory: from the school bench to the workplace. The company invites lyceum students to its innovative laboratories, and on the territory of the lyceum creates conditions for in-depth development of new programs. This gives each student the opportunity to build their trajectory — plant biotechnology, genomic editing, biophysics — under the guidance of current researchers. Total investments in this educational project amounted to 55 million rubles, 15 million of which were funds of Vector-BiAlhama. More than 100 college graduates already work for the company.

State support at different stages helps companies to go through the most time-consuming part of the biotechnological cycle - scientific research, and then significantly accelerate the transition to stable production, concludes Elena Rusanova. Thus, biotechnological production is approaching its ultimate goal - to form a production base in Russia that can fully satisfy the demand of the domestic market for starter crops.