Spiber’s biomanufacturing platform, from gene sequence design to commercial fermenters of over 100 kL, is now offered as a contract service for strain development and fermentation manufacturing. First presented at BioJapan 2026, Yokohama, October 7–9.

TSURUOKA, Japan, October 2, 2026 – Spiber Inc., the biotechnology company behind Brewed Protein™ materials, today launched SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY, a contract development and manufacturing service that opens its strain engineering and fermentation capabilities to customers. Spiber built those capabilities over nearly two decades to become the first to produce a structural protein material at commercial scale. SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY now offers the hardest part of that journey, scale-up itself, as a service. It debuts at BioJapan 2026 in Yokohama, October 7–9.

SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY offers high-yield strain development services for customers’ target proteins, and provides process development and contract manufacturing at every scale, from 1-liter fermenters to commercial facilities of over 100 kL. Target products include research reagents, industrial enzymes, diagnostic raw materials and food ingredients, as well as other proteins and fermentation products.

The services are for companies facing three familiar problems: yields that will not improve, projects stalled at scale-up, and no contract manufacturer able to take a genetically modified microorganism from the lab to commercial volumes.

Scale-up and manufacturing are also a capacity problem: contract fermentation capacity at pilot and commercial scale remains scarce worldwide. Experience is scarcer still. Few providers have ever taken a recombinant protein of their own from laboratory yields to routine commercial production. Spiber has, with Brewed Protein.

Since its founding, Spiber has pursued circular manufacturing that draws on the power of living organisms. Brewed Protein, Spiber’s first fermentation product, is a structural protein used not as an ingredient but as a material, spun into fibers for textile applications. Because no such material had been made at scale before, bringing it to commercial production meant building the entire chain in-house, from gene sequence design and strain construction to fermentation and purification at production scale. With optimized gene sequences and culture conditions, Spiber’s own production strains now reach titers of 50 g/L in its commercial facilities.  50 g/L is a production figure, not a best-case result from a test tube. 

Spiber’s most valuable asset is not a single material but the platform that made it: the strain engineering, fermentation and purification capabilities, and the commercial plant, all built for Brewed Protein. SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY opens that platform to customers as a new service, alongside Spiber’s materials business, extending the value the platform delivers to a far wider range of industries.

Two services
1. High-yield strain development.
Spiber optimizes the gene sequence for the customer’s target protein, introduces it into its proprietary microbial host strains and evaluates expression in culture.
In case studies, Spiber designed five sequences for each target protein and tested them against a control: the same gene as optimized and supplied by a commercial gene synthesis provider. For human FGF-2, all five Spiber sequences outperformed the control, delivering 5.9 to 9.4 times its yield. For human interferon-gamma (IFN-γ), the five delivered 1.1 to 2.6 times the yield of the control.
In broader internal benchmarking, Spiber-optimized sequences outperformed the benchmark for over 90 percent of target proteins tested, with improvements averaging four-fold and reaching forty-fold. The benchmark in these studies was each protein’s original sequence before optimization.
2. Process development and contract manufacturing. For customers who already have a production strain, Spiber develops the fermentation and purification process and manufactures under contract at whichever scale is needed: from 1 L bench fermenters to 2,000 L vessels at its R&D site in Tsuruoka, or commercial fermenters of over 100 kL at its plant in Rayong. Each stage can be commissioned on its own, from a single lab-scale evaluation to full production runs. The service covers proteins, other fermentation products and microbial biomass, for applications such as research reagents, industrial enzymes, diagnostic raw materials and food ingredients.

Message from Maya Kawana, CEO
“Spiber has achieved commercial-scale production of Brewed Protein™ materials, now adopted by more than 40 brands in over 200 products. Both figures continue to grow each year.

“Developing diverse structural proteins has enabled us to build the technology, expertise, and facilities needed to scale fermentation from the lab to commercial production. Through SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY, we are making these capabilities available to other companies to shorten their time to market. Faster commercialization reduces the burden of ongoing costs and improves a business’s chances of success.

“Our work with strategic partners already extends beyond apparel textiles. This service may also create new opportunities for collaboration across industries.

“By helping more companies bring their technologies to market, we aim to accelerate progress toward a world where we no longer compete for finite resources.”

BioJapan 2026
Spiber will present SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY at BioJapan 2026, Pacifico Yokohama, October 7–9, at booth A-05 (Tsuruoka Science Park joint booth). Researchers from the strain development and fermentation teams will be at the booth to discuss specific projects.

How to engage
An initial discussion requires no sequence information; technical details are exchanged once a non-disclosure agreement is in place. From the first consultation, the researchers who develop the strain and the production process take part directly, and the same team stays with a project through delivery. Indicative pricing and lead times are published in the service overview.

Service webpage: https://spiber.inc/en/biofoundry 

Service overview and pricing (PDF): https://spiber.inc/en/biofoundry/SPIBER_BIOFOUNDRY_flyer_en.pdf

Inquiries: Kenji Higashi, SPIBER BIOFOUNDRY, Spiber Inc., biopartnerships@spiber.inc

About Spiber Inc.
Spiber Inc. was founded in Tsuruoka, Yamagata, Japan, in 2007. The company develops Brewed Protein™ materials, structural proteins produced by microbial fermentation from plant-derived sugars, for apparel and other industries, in pursuit of circular manufacturing that draws on the power of living organisms. Spiber operates an R&D site in Tsuruoka and a commercial production plant in Rayong, Thailand, and carries out gene sequence design, strain construction, fermentation, purification and commercial-scale production in-house. https://spiber.inc

Company profile

Name: Spiber Inc.

Head office: 234-1 Mizukami, Kakuganji, Tsuruoka, Yamagata, Japan

Representative: Maya Kawana, CEO

Established: September 2007