ICL partners with Ideelab Biotechnology to develop disruptive biological products

Date:04-23-2024

Brazilian startup Ideelab Biotechnology, a leader in R&D services and high-tech biological products, announced this week its new partnership with the multinational ICL, a global leader in unique minerals, nutrition, and plant physiology, to develop six new biological technologies disruptive to global agriculture. 

The announcement comes one week after Ideelab signed an innovation partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks, a North American company leader in synthetic biology, for innovation in the Brazilian agricultural segment.

″The partnership with Ideelab will accelerate the process of developing innovative solutions for agriculture, ICL's DNA, through the technological base of biologicals, allowing us to offer even more advanced and sustainable solutions to our customers,″ said Michel Castellani, Director of Research and ICL Development. 

″Ideelab has the knowhow and technological structure complementary to ICL and, therefore, we believe that this collaboration will generate a lot of innovation for the sector,″ he added.

ICL Group Ltd. is a global plant nutrition and physiology company developing impactful solutions to sustainability challenges in food, agriculture, and industrial markets. 

ICL utilizes its unique bromine, potash and phosphate resources, its global professional workforce and sustainability-focused R&D and technology innovation capabilities to drive the company's growth in its end markets.

IdeeLab develops advanced solutions for the agricultural market, focusing on next-generation biologicals based on metabolites, proteins, and other active ingredients microorganisms produce. 

For Ronaldo Dalio, ″establishing this partnership with a company that is already a leader in plant nutrition and physiology means accelerating the generation of innovation for Brazilian agribusiness, with potential impact on a global scale″. 

The partnership will be leveraged by the IdeeLab biofactory, which plans to start operations by the beginning of 2025, with a fermentation capacity of six million liters, designed for the industrialization of the next generations of biological technology for the market.

″From the first conversations, ICL's ambition to develop disruptive innovation with biological products for agriculture was evident, to offer sustainable and regenerative solutions for food production on a global scale,″ Ronaldo highlighted. 

″This synergy of purposes brought us together and helped us quickly build a partnership.″