Central Illinois is living up to its groan-worthy nickname, Silicorn Valley, thanks to partnerships that allow University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s iFAB accelerator to establish precision fermentation infrastructure with major corn commodity players like ADM and Primient to scale new products.
The iFAB consortium works with the university’s Integrated Bioprocessing Research Lab (IBRL), which is advancing precision fermentation science and enabling companies to prove their products’ ability to scale, according to Beth Conerty, regional innovation officer at iFAB Tech Hub.
The iFAB accelerator received a $51 million grant from the US Department of Commerce in 2024, and the state of Illinois has contributed $30 million.
Conerty, who discussed iFAB and the state of precision fermentation at Future Food-Tech San Francisco, helps run the consortium of 36 partners, including leading food and beverage manufacturers like Kraft-Heinz, that are joining forces to bring precision fermentation capabilities to the US.
“Between ADM and Primient, they grind 800,000 bushels of corn every single day just in Decatur, Ill.,” Conerty said.
iFAB is helping to develop contract manufacturing agreements with the two commodity giants that would open their precision fermentation technology to smaller players aiming to scale their products.
Demand for biotech
The IBRL pilot-scale facility helps companies produce small quantities of their precision fermentation-derived products (roughly 2,000 liters and 2,000 kilograms at a time) to help them derisk the technology on its path to commercialization, Conerty said.
Substantial demand for IBRL is the motivator for establishing iFAB, she said.
“We were seeing so many companies come in and want to do precision fermentation projects, and we could only help them to a certain point,” Conerty explained. “We’re part of a research institution, and they needed manufacturing partners, so iFAB grew out of that.”
She described the consortium as moving in the same direction to grow precision fermentation and biomanufacturing assets in Illinois.
Building a consortium of partners
ADM and Primient have used precision fermentation in their own product portfolios for decades, and they have both partnered with IBRL since the facility opened.
“We needed to figure out a way that they would be interested in opening their doors for other companies,” she said. “So, we brought all these groups together to apply to the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration Tech Hubs Program.”
The $51 million grant partly goes to ADM and Primient to encourage them to provide smaller companies access to their large-scale precision fermentation facilities.
“These facilities are so expensive, and expecting every single new technology, every new startup company, to build their own, is untenable and a recipe for failure,” she said.
The goal is to reduce the cost of startup companies like Michroma, which uses fungi and fermentation to manufacture natural food colorants. They are the winner of this year’s iFAB Kraft Heinz Innovation Award and FoodNavigator’s Global Food-Tech Awards.
“What we are building will hopefully really reduce the cost of startup companies like Michroma to be able to scale up and manufacture their fermentation processes,” she said. “We’re building shared-use facilities and reducing capex costs.”
Regulation rollocoaster
The development of products can face challenges based on consumer preference and rapid changes in government regulation.
For example, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill in 2025 that bans the sale of cultivated meat for two years, following the lead of Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana and Nebraska.
The regulatory risk for novel food products poses a substantial challenge in finding the financial support to bring those products to market in the US.
Changes at the national level under the HHS Sec. Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Make America Healthy Again movement have been a boon for companies like Michroma, which is developing clean-label alternatives to synthetic food dyes, Conerty said.
These regulatory hurdles also impact consumer preference for products and create greater investment risk, which makes iFAB a critical player in bringing together stakeholders.
Playing catch up on fermentation
Building a precision fermentation infrastructure in the US is as much an issue of national security as it is economic development, according to Conerty.
“Other parts of the globe are investing extremely heavily in this space,” she said. “Europe did decades ago; they have some of the larger facilities. India and China are just pouring resources into this biotechnology and biomanufacturing industry.”
The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology is putting the regulatory pieces in place to address the issue of biotechnology in the US, Conerty said, adding that a report released last year by the NSCEB called for a $15 billion investment from the federal government to stay abreast of programs across the globe.
“Until those resources are actually deployed, the industry is a little bit hamstrung,” she said.
She said food security is a national security concern and some ingredients are only available from other countries, making bioengineering and precision fermentation critical for the future of the nation.
“There are ingredients like monk fruit, which is only grown in a very particular spot in China, and the US food system uses monk fruit and monk fruit extract a lot,” she said. “So, if we don’t start investing in alternative sources, alternative production mechanisms and ways that the US can manage it, we are quite vulnerable.”
