1. Can you briefly introduce your team? What’s your story and what drives you?
We’re an international team brought together by a shared conviction: diverse perspectives lead to better solutions. Spread across countries, backgrounds, and specialities, from data analysts and technical developers to business developers, each of us plays a unique role in building VCG.AI.
What drives us is seeing real change: helping businesses navigate the complexity of supply chains, creating real value, and turning insights into action. We believe that by combining our varied experiences, we can deliver clarity, speed, and impact — together.
2. In simple words, what is your project about and how is it linked with CIRCULOOS?
YEAST2VALUE turns brewer’s spent yeast from a waste problem into a new source of high-value proteins for food, feed, and biotech. We design and run a circular value chain with a brewery supplying yeast, ProteinDistillery upcycling it into functional proteins, and residuals flowing back to brewing. In CIRCULOOS we use RAMP for onboarding and collaboration, the Circuloos Data Platform for data exchange, and GRETA for the environmental assessment, so the chain is measurable, replicable, and easy to scale.
3. How did you come up with this project idea/concept and what innovative benefits will it bring to the end users?
Working with the brewery industry, we saw large, underused yeast streams and framed a feasibility within CIRCULOOS to prove a better path. The innovation is treating spent yeast as a product, not a burden: ProteinDistillery’s patented, solvent free process yields clean label proteins with strong functional properties; breweries cut disposal costs and unlock revenue; ingredient buyers reduce reliance on imported soy or dairy proteins and the volatility that comes with them; and overall GHG emissions improve versus linear baselines. CIRCULOOS tools help quantify these benefits and de-risk replication.
4. What type of synergies do you want to explore/are already exploring with other circular economy partners?
We would like to collaborate with breweries beyond the pilot (PLU/Heineken network), ingredient makers, feed and agritech firms, and biotech companies adopting BSY-derived proteins.
5. What are your plans for the future when it comes to the development of your ideas & projects?
We want to validate with Lobik and expand with PLU, building a repeatable blueprint other breweries can adopt; grow volumes and product lines as ProteinDistillery ramps capacity.
Later we would continue towards building biomanufacturing infrastructure: progress from pilot to modular, mid scale hubs co-located with breweries, with clear business plans per actor.
In the end we want to extend the same circular value-chain approach to adjacent, high potential streams identified through our analytics.