Palm oil is one of the most successful ingredients ever developed by nature. It is productive, relatively inexpensive and remarkably versatile. Replacing it is therefore much harder than simply finding another source of vegetable oil. Dutch biotech company NoPalm Ingredients is taking a fundamentally different route: instead of growing oil-bearing crops, it grows oil-producing yeast.

Bread, beer, wine — these are the products most people associate with yeast. But some yeast species have another, much less familiar capability: they can accumulate substantial quantities of lipids inside their cells.

These so-called oleaginous yeasts effectively act as microscopic oil factories. Wageningen-based NoPalm Ingredients is turning that biological phenomenon into an industrial production technology. Its ambition is not merely to produce another alternative oil, but to establish fermentation as an additional manufacturing platform for fats and oils. And that distinction matters.

From agricultural side stream to fat

The basic concept is surprisingly elegant. NoPalm Ingredients starts with agri-food side streams, including materials such as potato-derived streams, rejected vegetables and whey permeate. These materials are pre-processed into substrates containing nutrients that can be consumed by yeast.

A proprietary non-GMO yeast is subsequently grown in fermentation vessels. Under suitable conditions, the microorganisms consume sugars, organic acids and alcohols and accumulate oil inside their cells. After fermentation, the oil is recovered from the yeast biomass and further refined into a functional ingredient. NoPalm markets its emerging portfolio under the REVÓLEO™ brand. (NoPalm Ingredients). In other words, the production chain starts to look less like conventional agriculture and more like industrial biotechnology:

side stream → fermentation → yeast biomass → oil extraction → refining → functional fat

That opens up some intriguing possibilities.

Producing oil is only half the challenge

Microorganisms producing lipids is scientifically interesting, but that alone does not make a commercially relevant food ingredient. For food manufacturers, the origin of a fat is only part of the story. What really matters is how it behaves.

A fat used in a chocolate filling needs the correct melting characteristics. A bakery fat needs to provide structure and aeration. Margarine requires spreadability at refrigerator temperature while remaining stable on the table. Plant-based cheese may require a completely different melting and crystallisation profile.

Fatty-acid composition, solid-fat content, crystallisation behaviour, oxidative stability and melting profile ultimately determine what manufacturers can do with a fat. This is where fermentation becomes particularly interesting.

Rather than being entirely constrained by the lipid composition naturally produced by a particular agricultural crop, microbial fermentation provides another set of process variables. The microorganism, feedstock and fermentation conditions can influence the resulting lipid composition and functionality.

NoPalm therefore describes its technology as a platform capable of producing different oils and fats for different applications. (NoPalm Ingredients). That could ultimately be more important than simply replacing palm oil.

REVÓLEO Soft: a semi-solid yeast fat

One of the first tangible results is REVÓLEO™ Soft, a refined and deodorised microbial oil that is semi-solid at room temperature.

According to NoPalm Ingredients, the ingredient is suitable for applications including margarines and spreads, filled chocolates, nut-based fillings, confectionery, cookies and cakes, hybrid cheeses, yoghurt and coffee creamers, as well as plant-based meat and dairy alternatives.

The company states that, depending on the formulation, REVÓLEO Soft can replace up to 100% of the conventional fat ingredient. (NoPalm Ingredients) That breadth of applications illustrates the real commercial challenge NoPalm is addressing.

Food manufacturers are generally not looking for an interesting biotechnology story. They need an ingredient that works in an existing product, preferably without forcing them to redesign their entire manufacturing process. Performance therefore comes first.

Sustainability becomes much more powerful when the sustainable ingredient also solves a formulation, sourcing or supply-chain problem.

From laboratory fermentation to 120,000 litres

Perhaps the most significant development at NoPalm has been its move beyond laboratory and pilot-scale fermentation.

In 2025, the company announced that it had successfully carried out fermentation at 120,000-litre scale, using a food-industry side stream as feedstock. The fermentation took place at a contract manufacturing facility and was followed by downstream processing and refining through specialised partners. (NoPalm Ingredients)

Scaling fermentation is not trivial. A microorganism that performs perfectly in a laboratory flask does not automatically behave identically in a vessel containing tens of thousands of litres. Oxygen transfer, mixing, heat transfer, contamination control, substrate concentration and downstream separation all become engineering challenges.

And producing one successful industrial batch is different again from operating a reliable commercial factory. NoPalm itself is refreshingly clear about this next hurdle. The company says the central questions are increasingly shifting from whether the fermentation works towards scale, supply reliability, economics and regulatory pathways. (NoPalm Ingredients) That is exactly the transition a serious industrial biotechnology company eventually has to make.

A demonstration factory in the Netherlands

To gain more control over that industrialisation process, NoPalm Ingredients has been working with NIZO Food Research on a demonstration factory at the Food Innovation Campus in Ede.

The objective is to bring the complete process under one roof and move towards industrial production, creating a bridge between external production campaigns and future commercial factories. NoPalm has described this step as moving its technology towards Technology Readiness Levels 7 and 8. (NoPalm Ingredients). An even more interesting model may follow after that.

Instead of building huge centralised factories and transporting large quantities of low-value feedstock towards them, NoPalm envisages locating production close to companies that already generate suitable side streams.

A partnership with dairy cooperative Milcobel illustrates the concept. The companies are studying the possibility of developing a commercial production facility at Milcobel’s site in Langemark, Belgium, potentially using whey permeate from dairy processing directly as fermentation feedstock. Operations are currently targeted for 2028, subject to the outcome of the feasibility work and further development. (NoPalm Ingredients)

This co-location concept could become an important part of the business model. It effectively turns a side stream from one food process into the raw material for another ingredient industry.

The sustainability argument

The environmental proposition is equally ambitious. NoPalm Ingredients reports that its process can reduce land use by 99% and greenhouse-gas emissions by approximately 90% compared with conventional palm oil. These figures are company-reported environmental performance claims and should therefore be interpreted within the assumptions and system boundaries of the underlying assessments rather than as universal values for every future production facility. (NoPalm Ingredients)

But the fundamental advantage of the technology is easy to understand. Fermentation does not require plantations of oil-bearing trees.

And when the carbon and nutrients supplied to the fermenter originate from existing food-industry side streams, the technology potentially creates additional value from material already circulating through the food system.

NoPalm’s approach therefore combines two developments that are attracting considerable attention in food technology: precision control through fermentation and circular use of industrial side streams.

Interestingly, the company is increasingly framing its technology not as a crusade to eliminate palm oil, but as an additional production pathway. That is a sensible distinction.

Palm oil is an extraordinarily productive crop. The problem is that global demand for oils and fats continues to increase while agricultural land, biodiversity and climate resilience are increasingly constrained. Fermentation could add production capacity without requiring an equivalent expansion of oil-crop acreage.

Beyond food

The technology is not restricted to food. Under REVÓLEO™ Silk, NoPalm is also developing fermentation-derived lipids for cosmetics and personal-care applications. The company positions the ingredient as a rapidly melting soft butter and functional emollient for products including body lotions, balms, conditioners, cosmetics and soaps. (NoPalm Ingredients)

NoPalm has already disclosed application collaborations involving companies including Colgate-Palmolive, while its food development work has included applications with Those Vegan Cowboys and other industrial partners. (NoPalm Ingredients)

This diversification makes technological sense. The global oils-and-fats industry is much broader than food alone, and specialty fats can derive considerable value from functionality rather than simply from volume.

Fermentation as a new way of manufacturing fat

NoPalm Ingredients was founded in 2021 by Lars Langhout and Professor Jeroen Hugenholtz. Since then, the company has moved from laboratory development towards industrial-scale validation, raised private capital and received European support for further development of its fermentation platform. In 2024 it announced a €5 million seed round, while an EU Horizon/EIC project records a €2.5 million contribution to NoPalm Ingredients for development of its technology. (NoPalm Ingredients)

There is still plenty of engineering ahead.

Industrial fermentation ultimately has to compete with an agricultural oils industry that has been optimised for decades and operates at enormous scale. Yield, fermentation productivity, feedstock consistency, downstream-processing costs, energy consumption, regulatory approval and factory utilisation will all influence whether microbial oils can become cost-competitive at large volumes.

But that is also what makes NoPalm Ingredients interesting. The company is no longer merely demonstrating that yeast can produce oil. Biology established that principle long ago. The real innovation is trying to turn that biological capability into a reliable industrial process — and then designing the resulting fats around what food and personal-care manufacturers actually need.

The beige, semi-solid REVÓLEO Soft emerging from this process may look surprisingly ordinary. Technologically, however, it represents something rather unusual.

It is fat manufactured by fermentation rather than harvested from a field or plantation.

If NoPalm Ingredients can successfully make the transition from industrial demonstration to reliable, competitive large-scale manufacturing, yeast could become much more than the microorganism behind bread, beer and wine. It could become another production platform for the global oils-and-fats industry.