Europe’s brewing industry is facing an unusual challenge: shrinking beer consumption has left large amounts of fermentation infrastructure sitting underused. At the same time, demand for sustainable and locally produced protein alternatives continues to grow rapidly across the food industry. German foodtech company Pacifico Biolabs is connecting those two trends through a model that repurposes brewery infrastructure to produce alternative proteins at industrial scale.
Pacifico Biolabs has secured €7 million in a Series A funding round backed by Stray Dog Capital, TGFS, Sprout and About Ventures, Simon Capital, FoodLabs, and a regional brewery partner.
The company plans to use the funding to scale production in Saxony, expand its team, and accelerate commercial launches across the DACH region and Nordic Europe ahead of broader retail expansion planned for late 2026.
Repurposing Brewery Infrastructure for Food Production
Pacifico Biolabs develops protein ingredients using mycelium fermentation, a process that uses fungal root structures to produce high protein food ingredients.
Unlike many fermentation based food startups that rely on expensive custom built bioreactors and manufacturing facilities, Pacifico uses existing beer brewery fermentation tanks.
This allows the company to leverage industrial infrastructure already operating across Europe while significantly reducing the capital costs usually associated with scaling fermentation based food production.
The approach comes at a time when breweries throughout Europe are facing declining alcohol and beer consumption, leaving large amounts of fermentation capacity underutilised.
Pacifico sees this unused infrastructure as a major opportunity to scale sustainable protein production more quickly and efficiently than competitors building new production plants from scratch.
Tackling Europe’s Protein Supply Challenge
Europe currently produces most of its own meat but still relies heavily on imported feed proteins, exposing supply chains to geopolitical instability, environmental pressures, and rising transportation costs.
Pacifico aims to create a more regional and resilient protein production model by manufacturing alternative proteins closer to where they are ultimately consumed.
By combining local brewery infrastructure with mycelium fermentation technology, the company believes it can help reduce Europe’s dependence on imported protein sources while supporting more sustainable food production systems.
The company also argues that utilising existing industrial assets allows it to move closer toward price parity with conventional meat products, one of the biggest challenges facing the broader alternative protein sector.
Lowering the Cost Barrier for Fermentation Based Foods
Fermentation based protein startups have attracted significant investor attention in recent years, but scaling production economically has remained difficult because of the high cost of building dedicated manufacturing infrastructure.
Pacifico’s model is designed to bypass much of that challenge by integrating directly into infrastructure that already exists and is widely distributed across European markets.
This strategy could potentially allow the company to scale faster while avoiding the long construction timelines and major capital expenditures required for new fermentation facilities.
The company believes this infrastructure first approach provides a more economically sustainable path toward mass market adoption of fermentation derived proteins.
Expanding Across Europe
With the new funding secured, Pacifico Biolabs plans to accelerate production and commercial growth across German speaking markets and Nordic Europe.
The company is preparing for future retail launches while continuing to scale manufacturing capacity through partnerships with regional brewing infrastructure.
As food systems increasingly seek more sustainable, localised, and resilient sources of protein, companies capable of combining biotechnology with existing industrial infrastructure are becoming an increasingly important part of the future European food production landscape.
Pacifico Biolabs is positioning itself at the intersection of both trends by transforming underused brewery assets into a new generation of protein manufacturing infrastructure.