Rooted in Change: Industrial enzymes – nature's building blocks

Biozeroc engineered its own enzyme for its cement process. That, Liv Andersson told Jan Christoph Bohnerth on a live episode of Rooted in Change, "was hard, but it wasn't that hard. The hard part was how do we bring it to an industrial setting?" The founder and CEO has since made that hard part the business. Biozeroc licenses the hardware and process that let enzymes run cheaply inside existing plants. Its next challenge, Liv said, is explaining that to investors without a biotech background.

Liv grew up in Swedish Lapland, spent years in the sustainability team of an engineering firm in London and now lives in Cambridge. There Liv came across scientists who used bacteria to grow concrete. As the team scaled the idea up, it swapped the living bacteria, which could be temperamental, for the enzyme itself, the active component, used as a catalyst to make the binder. Then it found that everything built for enzymes serves pharma, with low volumes, very high margins and batch processes. Cement needs the opposite. So Biozeroc rebuilt the hardware, the automation and a continuous manufacturing process from scratch.

Meanwhile AI was turning the design of new enzymes into something close to a commodity. If Biozeroc had struggled that much to get its enzyme into a plant, Liv reasoned, other companies would too. The change came gradually. The team approached a few companies about one wastewater application, got an overwhelmingly positive response from several and moved its energy from the product to the platform. It is now in the closing stages of a contract in a completely different industry.

was hard, but it wasn't that hard. The hard part was how do we bring it to an industrial setting?

Asked how to explain all this to family in northern Sweden, Liv started with breakfast. Boiling an egg uses a lot of heat to change its properties. Industry often uses high heat, high pressure or chemicals, and heat costs energy and emits carbon. Enzymes work at room temperature and ambient pressure, but have traditionally not been economic. Biozeroc tackles that in two ways. Its process IP makes enzymatic manufacturing continuous and free of human intervention. Most biological processes need a lot of manual steps, which works in pharma, Liv said. "Try getting that to a chemical plant. I mean, good luck." The second lever is immobilisation. Fixing the enzyme on a support means it no longer has to be filtered out at the end, and it lasts several times longer.

Customers fall into two groups. Pharma, cosmetics and chemicals companies already use enzymes and understand them, but need bigger savings before they change a working process. In pharma, continuous manufacturing can also shorten regulatory approval. Industries new to enzymes need a first conversation about what an enzyme is, so sales take longer. One industrial wastewater client had tried enzymes before and could not make the economics work. In wastewater, Biozeroc would replace a thermal hydrolysis unit with an enzymatic one. It does not build or own plants. It retrofits the catalysis step and earns from consultancy, licences for its IP and hardware, and recurring sales of consumables.

How the move sounds is another matter. Some investors see learning and conviction. Others, perhaps more often in Europe, ask why the team did not think of the platform straight away. Jan Christoph would not have taken the feedback as graciously as the guest, and said those investors were wrong. Liv's answer is that Biozeroc has changed its place in the value chain, while the product is the same and the development behind it is still valid.

Concrete made the first pitch easy, Liv said, because everyone has seen and touched it. Biozeroc has ten people and is not raising yet, but will be soon. This time the start-up that began with something anyone could touch has to make investors see a catalysis step inside someone else's plant.

Recorded live at The Drop 2026 for Rooted in Change, hosted by Jan Christoph Bohnerth, with Liv Andersson.