Evonik Breaks Ground on €80 Million Biotech Expansion at Slovakian Fermas Site
核心洞察
Evonik (搜索) has broken ground on an approximately €80 million biotechnology expansion at its Fermas (搜索) site in Slovenská Ľupča, Slovakia, targeting completion in early 2028.
The investment adds state-of-the-art downstream fermentation technology to increase capacity for development and manufacture of complex pharmaceutical intermediates.
The expansion will create roughly 50 new jobs and reinforce Fermas (搜索) as a key Evonik (搜索) biotechnology hub serving drug substance contract manufacturing.
Evonik (搜索) has broken ground on a biotechnology expansion at its Fermas (搜索) site in Slovenská Ľupča, Slovakia, backed by an investment of approximately €80 million (about $92 million). The project is expected to be completed in early 2028 and marks the next major milestone in Evonik's effort to expand its biotechnology capabilities and strengthen contract manufacturing services for its drug substance business.
The investment will add state-of-the-art downstream fermentation technology to the site, increasing capacity for the development and manufacture of complex pharmaceutical intermediates. The expansion is expected to create approximately 50 new jobs and further reinforce Fermas (搜索) as one of Evonik (搜索)'s key biotechnology hubs.
Strategic Rationale
"Today is an important step in our strategy to expand our biotechnology platform and support our customers with innovative, scalable and sustainable manufacturing solutions," said Lauren Kjeldsen, member of the Management Board and Chief Operating Officer at Custom Solutions, Evonik (搜索). "Biotechnology demonstrates how economic growth and sustainability can go hand in hand."
Miroslav Havlik, General Manager of Evonik (搜索) Fermas (搜索), framed the investment as a signal of long-term commitment to the region: "This investment demonstrates the company's confidence in biotechnology and in Slovakia as a location where innovation turns into industrial scale products."
Biotechnology is playing an increasingly important role in pharmaceutical manufacturing, enabling the production of complex molecules through advanced fermentation processes. Compared with conventional chemical synthesis, fermentation-based processes can offer a more sustainable route to selected intermediates by reducing the need for organic solvents and minimizing process-related waste. The Fermas (搜索) site already operates on 100 percent green electricity and uses renewable and certified raw materials in selected production processes.
Three Decades of Fermentation Expertise
The expansion builds on more than three decades of fermentation expertise at Evonik (搜索) Fermas (搜索). Founded in 1992, the site has evolved from amino acid production into a strategic biotechnology manufacturing hub serving the pharmaceutical, personal care, nutrition, and specialty chemical industries.
In recent years, the site has also become a key location for Evonik (搜索)'s biotechnology activities, including the successful launch of the world's first industrial-scale rhamnolipid biosurfactant production facility. Rhamnolipids (搜索) pair hydrophilic rhamnose sugar heads with hydrophobic fatty acid tails, and Evonik's marquee customer for the ingredient is consumer product maker Unilever, which launched a hand-dishwashing liquid containing it in Chile in 2019 and has since expanded the product to Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand.
Evonik (搜索) scaled up rhamnolipid production by building a dedicated downstream processing facility for the product line rather than by adding more fermenters. The site's fermentation house operates 50,000 L reactors, and the company has been using and upgrading those since the 1990s. The plant has equipment and mastery on-site for about 14 types of separation steps, with a typical purification using two to four methods, according to plant manager Miroslav Havlik.
Evonik (搜索) says Fermas (搜索) has a rhamnolipid capacity in the double-digit kiloton range, though exact output at any given time is a trade secret. The company has strong patent protection around the modified bacterial strains it uses for rhamnolipids (搜索). According to Miroslava Čikošová, who leads Evonik's contract fermentation business in Europe, the most productive wild-type organisms for rhamnolipid are pathogens that must be fed a mix of vegetable oil and sugar; Evonik instead used genetic engineering to give a low-biohazard organism, Pseudomonas putida (搜索), the biosynthetic pathways it needs to make rhamnolipids from a single feedstock of corn sugar.
A Flexible, Reconfigurable Plant
About half the overall capacity at Fermas (搜索) makes chemicals that Evonik (搜索) sells on the open market, and half is contract manufacturing for other companies, according to Tim Pohlmann, global head of fermentation for Evonik's health-care division. Originally, the plant had identical 50,000 L reactors; as the site's products diversified beyond amino acids, the engineering team modified individual fermenters to nurture each new fermentation program.
"Fermas (搜索) is the scale-up and launch hub of Evonik (搜索)," Pohlmann said. Most products start at petri dish scale in the firm's biotech R&D center in Germany or in customers' labs before coming to Slovakia. Some, like the rhamnolipids (搜索), stay long term, while others move to dedicated plants elsewhere, such as the L-lysine fermentation now centered at the firm's facility in Castro, Brazil.
Havlik described the site's flexibility in practical terms: "If you have a competent cook, the same kitchen can make Slovakian bryndzové halušky or German schnitzel." At any given time, various bacteria, yeast, algae, and fungi are working in different tanks. "We have built the fermenters to be switchable," he said, with downstream purification customized for each fermentation.
Pohlmann noted that fermentation can replace multi-step chemistry in some cases: "We have examples here where you can substitute a five-, six-, or seven-step synthesis with a biotech process that runs in one little asset. This doesn't work for every molecule, of course, but for some it does. You need sugar, you need energy, you need water and some ingredients, all of which you can get locally."
Čikošová said gene editing, cell-bank techniques, and process engineering have advanced substantially, widening the array of chemicals that can be made with microbes and extending how long a fermentation can run and how stable a production strain stays between runs. Genetic drift, she said, was a problem in the 20th century but is not in the 21st. Those factors lower the cost of fermentation, making it competitive with more-established thermochemical synthetic methods.
Regional Economic Impact
The expansion is proceeding even as Evonik (搜索) executes plans that will cut 6,000 jobs from its global workforce. The Banská Bystrica expansion will add 50 new positions to the site's current head count of around 300.
Ondrej Lunter, governor of the Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region, said the region and Slovakia as a whole are transitioning out of a period when classic blue-collar work, especially automotive manufacturing, dominated the economy. That transformation has often gone poorly, he acknowledged, with locally owned factories bought out by foreign capital and later closed due to mismanagement and competition from low-cost operations outside Europe.
"Fermas (搜索) is a completely different story," Lunter said. Evonik (搜索) purchased the site but then invested long term in both the facilities and the people. "It was not just a one-time opportunistic buyout; it was a really responsible step into the Slovak market."
Around 700 companies operating in Slovakia are completely or majority German-owned, according to Marco Trisciuzzi, managing director of the German-Slovak Chamber of Commerce (搜索) (AHK). Sustainability is a central concern for the German companies that participate in AHK and its sister organizations elsewhere in the European Union, Trisciuzzi said, and Evonik (搜索)'s fermentation operations satisfy those concerns because of the carbon footprint and pollution advantages they can achieve compared with petrochemical production.
Slovakia's power supply is 65 percent nuclear and 30 percent renewables, which Lunter said gives the country an edge whenever sustainability plays a role in investment decisions. Čikošová said that because Fermas (搜索) can access clean power, most of the carbon footprint for the plant's products comes from the corn sugar fed to the microbes. The firm is watching a handful of start-ups commercializing ways to ferment food waste into chemicals, including biosurfactants (搜索), and has its own research along those lines.
Pohlmann said the team is always looking for additional environmental gains: "I strongly believe that the whole footprint of a typical microbial fermentation process is much, much smaller compared to a chemical synthesis. You come from one place, and you're now in a much better place—doesn't mean you could not be in an even better place."
Building a Local Talent Pipeline
The site maintains close relationships with local universities, helping to secure a pipeline of qualified engineers and supporting an innovation ecosystem. The region has put more than $100 million into labs and other infrastructure for secondary schools, Lunter said, and Evonik (搜索)'s presence has helped the regional government win European Union grants at the grade-school level and forge partnerships with the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra (搜索) and the Slovak University of Technology (搜索) (STU) in Bratislava.
A large portion of the engineers, chemists, and biologists at Fermas (搜索) are STU graduates, and Evonik (搜索) actively recruits from the university's science and engineering departments each year. Martin Rebroš, STU's vice-rector for science, research, and international projects, said the school never has trouble placing students in industry positions, but Fermas has room only for a few most years; a larger number of graduates find jobs in central and northern Europe.
"There are not enough companies in the region," Rebroš said. "At the university level, we are trying to build up an ecosystem of start-ups and spin-offs," especially in biotech, though he acknowledged struggling to get traction with venture capital groups. Rebroš and his team are developing a university-level investment fund to prime the pump. "Biotechnology is one field we have identified as business-driven and with high potential in Slovakia," he said, adding that he would like to have 10 more facilities like Fermas (搜索).
By itself, Fermas (搜索) isn't big enough to turn the region into a high-tech and biotech hub, Lunter said, but it is creating a virtuous circle. Evonik (搜索) needs staff educated in chemistry, genetics, engineering, and biology, and it has demonstrated that it is sticking around—making the facility a partner worth investing in with workforce development programs. The resulting local supply of skilled labor has in turn brought other science-oriented businesses to the area, with the region also winning investment in wood products, aluminum, and digital services, including artificial intelligence.
"That means kids with an education do not have to seek out jobs in the capital city or abroad; they are finding their employment here," Lunter said. "Our main strategy is to create conditions where the young people do not have to leave the region."