Investment of the month: Revyve turns scienctific into industry
Revyve raised €24M to scale sustainable yeast proteins that replace animal ingredients. IO+ spoke with co-founder Corjan van den Berg.
Published on October 3, 2025
Revyve team. Image: Peter de Klerk
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When Corjan van den Berg left his position as an assistant professor at Wageningen University & Research in 2019, he took a leap of faith. Together with co-founder Edgar Suarez Garcia, one of his PhD students, they decided to turn years of academic research into a company that could make a real impact on the food industry. That company became Revyve, which recently secured €24 million in growth financing to accelerate production of its yeast-based egg alternatives.
“Looking back at the past six years, one word comes to mind— cliché as it may sound: a rollercoaster,” recalls Van den Berg. “We’ve been through the high highs and the low lows every startup encounters. But turning a simple idea into a real factory, with a team of professionals making it work, feels like a dream come true.”
About Revyve
Founders: Corjan van den Berg and Edgar Suarez
CEO: Cedric Verstraeten
Founded: 2019, Wageningen (NL)
Capital raised: €40 million
Employees: 33
Ultimate goal: Replace all animal-based ingredients in food with sustainable, equally tasty alternatives.
Scaling from concept to factory floor
Revyve opened its first production facility in Dinteloord in 2024. The factory now operates at 200-ton capacity, producing sustainable ingredients that replace egg and egg whites in food applications ranging from baked goods to mayonnaise. With the new investment, Revyve can scale up to 1,600 tons per year.
The startup’s core focus has always been scalability. “From day one, Edgar and I thought in terms of factories,” says Van den Berg. The founders, both trained engineers, are well-equipped to design factories. By approaching the venture with a factory-first mindset, they were able to identify potential large-scale pain points from the outset.“It’s what sets us apart from many other companies in this sector. Customers want to become more sustainable, but they struggle to find proper alternatives. At the same time, egg prices continue to rise, and the market remains volatile. Our ingredient enables them to replace egg whites in their recipes without compromising on taste or texture—while dramatically reducing their carbon footprint.”
Corjan van den Berg. Image: Brada Media
Why egg whites?
Egg whites are everywhere in the food industry: in muffins, brioche, meringues, mayonnaise, and even as binders in meat substitutes. Revyve’s ingredient, made from yeast, offers a sustainable and functional replacement that does not require animal inputs.
The company is already seeing strong international traction. Through a distribution deal with Lallemand, one of the world’s largest yeast producers, Revyve is supplying its ingredients to the US and Canada. “Setting up distribution yourself is time-consuming,” Van den Berg notes. “So, we choose not to set this up ourselves, but to collaborate with partners who already have these distribution networks fully in place.”
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Investment of the month
Each month, we interview a startup or company that has recently received an investment.
Challenges ahead: balancing production and demand
Like many scale-ups, Revyve faces the delicate balance between production and sales. With a shelf life of two years, the ingredient offers some buffer, but the goal is to keep stock moving quickly into customers’ hands. “You need to grow your factory output in step with how fast you can sell the ingredient,” Van den Berg explains. “That balancing act is our biggest challenge at this point.”
A shifting biotech landscape
Recent moves by companies like Protix and The Protein Brewery to expand in the US raise questions about the investment landscape in the Netherlands. Van den Berg gets why companies make this decision. “Energy costs and grid congestion are real challenges here. They limit how fast you can expand production. In the US, our energy costs would be half of what they are here. Besides that, access to large-scale funding and subsidies is more readily available in the US. We’re focused on scaling our first factory, but I wouldn’t rule out expanding abroad in the future.”
Looking ahead: beyond yeast
Revyve’s long-term vision extends beyond the production of just yeast. By 2030, Van den Berg envisions a portfolio of sustainable ingredients derived from multiple microorganisms, including fungi, bacteria, and even microalgae. “Our dream started with one microbe. But if we stick to just yeast, we miss out on opportunities. In five years, I hope our portfolio will be dedicated to various types of biomass, all of which produce ingredients that help eliminate animal proteins from the food chain. That’s the mission.”