Patricia Aymà Maldonado

Like when you increase volume, you don't get new problems.

You get the same problems, but magnified.

So one of the biggest challenges is simply time.

The time it takes to detect an issue and the time you have to fix it before it affects the whole batch.

So the challenge is not only to grow.

It's to grow while keeping the full stability, the high quality and the constant performance across all the stages we have.

So scaling biotechnology is a race between the biology, the engineering and the time.

So right now we are improving all these three at once.

Yeah, it's a complex relationship.

For example, if you want to do a plastic cup, you have the company that have like the mold that is something really special in the plastic industry because every product has its mold.

They buy specified material to the petrol, oil, plastic industry, right?

And this company has had this material for a long time, like more than 50 and 100 years.

They have these materials and they have performed the R&D and everything.

And right now they just take it.

They know how to put it in the machines and they have the plastic cup at the end.

OK, it's so easy.

They don't need to change anything because it's really an established system.

And also it's really cheap because if our bioplastic costs three or four or five euros kilo, they cost 1.5.

So they have a big scale system that is already established.

It's easy to buy, easy to use, and the machines are adapted to that.