Inside a Techno-economic Analysis: What Biotech Founders Get Wrong About Costs, Yields & Scale-Up — and How to Fix It
- Gustavo Valente
- Dec 3, 2025
- 4 min read
Most founders enter the Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) process thinking it’s “just a model that will tell me how much my product will cost.”In reality, TEA often becomes the first time a team sees their entire bioprocess and scale-up pathway without the comfort of early-stage assumptions.
And when that happens, three things emerge:
hidden cost drivers
unrealistic expectations
scale-up realities that no one teaches in the lab or academia
These aren’t criticisms. They are patterns, and understanding them early can save founders years, millions, and a painful pivot.
“If we reduce fermentation time, we’ll double output and cut down the cost.”
This is one of the most expensive misconceptions in early-stage bioprocess development. R&D teams often spend months and hundreds of thousands optimizing fermentation time, only to discover later that:
fermentation time was never the true bottleneck
DSP, media cost, and yield drive more than 60% of total economics
Real TEA example:
Reducing fermentation time from 60 hours to 24 hours only decreased the cost of production (COGS) by <10%. But improving product recovery efficiency (DSP yield) by just 5% reduced COGS by >10%, and achieving this improvement is often far more realistic than spending months modifying the microorganism and reformulating media.
Most founders overestimate the impact of fermentation speed and underestimate how dramatically DSP shapes final economics.
“Our lab yield looks great, so the economics will work at scale.”
In cultivated meat and cellular agriculture, the most expensive part of the process is often not the bioreactor performance — it’s the media, especially growth factors.
A strain or cell line may show excellent yield or proliferation in the lab, but if it depends on difficult-to-source growth factors or ultra-expensive recombinant supplements…
…the economics collapse immediately when you scale from millilitres to cubic meters.
A great lab yield means nothing if it requires ingredients costing >$500,000 per kg.
Real TEA example:
Two cell lines showed similar growth yields, but one consumed 4× more growth-factor cocktail.The result? A 12-fold difference in cost per kg of biomass at scale.
Founders frequently optimize for biological performance but overlook media cost per unit of product, which can represent 60–80% of total COGS in early cultivated-meat processes.
Lab yield ≠ economic yield when the media bill destroys the unit economics.
“The inducer we’re using is too expensive — let’s replace it for something cheaper.”
In precision fermentation, media can represent 30–70% of total OPEX, but not all media components contribute equally to the final cost of production.
Founders often assume: Expensive ingredient = expensive COGS.
But in real TEAs, I routinely see the opposite:
carbon and nitrogen sources dominate cost
micronutrients, vitamins, and inducers are used in tiny amounts (<1% of total COGS)
replacing an expensive inducer rarely changes economics
changing the nitrogen source can shift COGS by 10–40%
Early TEA makes this visible before R&D teams spend months replacing components that don’t actually move the economic needle.
DSP is not a downstream choice — it is your business model
Founders often focus 90% of their R&D on fermentation.But in a TEA, downstream processing (DSP) frequently dominates both economics and operations.
DSP often represents:
40–80% of total production cost
60% of total equipment footprint
70% of total energy consumption
the majority of operational risk and variability
And unlike fermentation, DSP economics are driven by labour, energy, efficiency, and losses, including:
yield losses at each separation step
recovery efficiencies
energy-intensive operations (evaporation, drying, chilling)
labour for cleaning, CIP/SIP, and changeovers
downtime, fouling, and batch-to-batch variability
Each DSP unit operation—filtration, extraction, precipitation, chromatography, drying—is a cost multiplier, not a simple step.
The hard truth TEA reveals:
You don’t have a fermentation problem.You haven’t focused on your DSP strategy early enough.
“We’ll figure out scale later.”
This single assumption shapes your entire path to commercialization, and determines:
how much capital you will need
how many funding rounds you must raise
how long it will take to reach profitability
Founders often assume:
the pilot plant determines the commercial layout
CAPEX is just “bigger versions” of what they run today
equipment vendors can quote later
demo-scale is optional
But TEA consistently reveals that:
some processes are not economically viable below 200,000-L scale
others only make sense if they stay small, modular, or continuous
some require unit operations founders have never budgeted for
utilities (steam, cooling, water, electricity) can cost more than the fermenters
You can map your real path to scale — and the commercial scale you’ll likely need — long before your first pilot run.That’s exactly what an early-stage TEA is for.
You don’t need perfect data — you need realistic assumptions
Founders often delay TEA because they think they need:
complete mass balances
final yields
pilot-plant data
stable protocols
Not true. A TEA uses ranges, minimum, expected, and maximum, to:
identify breakpoints
define R&D targets
evaluate DSP technology options
show investors a credible path to viability
avoid blind optimism
Early TEA is about direction, not precision. Waiting for perfect data is how startups lose two years and then discover the economics never worked.
The Role of TEA: A Mirror, Not a Report
A good TEA doesn’t just calculate cost — it challenges assumptions.It shows founders:
what must be true for the economics to work
where the biggest levers are
which risks matter and which don’t
what plant size is required to hit target COGS
what commercial-scale unit operations actually look like
Most importantly:
A TEA brings science, engineering, and business into the same conversation — something that rarely happens early enough in some startups.
If you’re building a biotech, food-tech or sustainable-materials startup…
…there’s a good chance at least three of the misconceptions above apply to your process today.
A TEA doesn’t slow you down — it saves you from going fast in the wrong direction.
If you want to explore your process assumptions and see where the real economic breakpoints are:
👉 Book a TEA scoping call
Your technology might be promising — Let’s make sure the economics scale with it.
Gustavo Valente
Director, Sustech Innovation
WhatsApp: +52 55 3405 0552
gustavo@sustech-innovation.com
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