Native Microbials makes livestock lives better, more productive, and more sustainable

The microbiome discovery company Native Microbials has studied the highest-performing livestock and teased out impactful, natively-derived organisms to enable all livestock to perform better.

We spoke with Martin Mayhew, Vice President of Process Development and Manufacturing. It has been “really interesting to see this pioneering field, this application of this microbiome technology, into a field that is yet to adopt this kind of high tech solutions toward animal livestock problems,” he said.

Challenge: Finding a back pressure control device to bolt onto an existing platform

To finish designing their scale-down lab platform, Native Microbials needed back pressure control. They are conducting parallel fermentations in the lab, giving them a simple method to conduct a large number of trials. A back pressure control device which could easily hook into the exhaust pipe of any of the fermenters was critical to rapidly run the necessary trials.

Solution: Connecting Alicat pressure controllers to the fermenter exhaust pipe

One of Mayhew’s colleagues recommended Alicat. “It’s really above and beyond what I’ve seen historically… I’m just very impressed by the quickness by which it controls at a certain pressure. You turn it on, you change setpoint, it’ll move, and then it’s there. And the significant digits that are on the device are ridiculous. The other thing that was cool was I was able to talk to engineers, or technical support people from Alicat beforehand, to make sure that I get the right device. It’s pretty amazing. I don’t have to worry about it,” Mayhew said.

Next steps: Growing Native Microbials

Mayhew said that his one-year goal is to increase the fermentation capacity in the lab. In five years, he hopes to have built an in-house production plant.