Picture: Helge Jochens (Co-Founder and CTO) und Frank Wallrapp (Co-Founder and CEO), Twogee Biotech
Twogee Biotech develops and commercialises material-specific enzymatic solutions that enable a wide range of biomass residues to be efficiently converted into sustainable sugars. The approach combines highly specialised enzyme systems with biological production processes and aims to transfer these into industrial applications through scalable licensing models.
The company’s motivation is clearly rooted in the transformation towards greater sustainability and a circular economy. Many enzymatic solutions currently available are not sufficiently tailored to the diversity of real-world biomass residues. Their differing material properties and processing histories often result in enzymes that are insufficiently efficient or too unspecific – and therefore frequently not economically viable overall.
In practice, this often prevents the material use of biomass residues, meaning they are predominantly incinerated or used solely for energy recovery. Twogee therefore pursues the goal of enabling its customers to convert waste materials into waste-based sugars in an economically viable way, creating sustainable, non-food-based biological feedstocks for the chemical and biosynthetic industries – and thus establishing applied, profitable sustainability.
Alongside technological development, the start-up faced a key challenge at the beginning of 2025: the targeted identification of suitable funding programmes and mentoring opportunities. The funding landscape in the chemical and technology sectors is highly fragmented, with programmes differing significantly in terms of objectives, evaluation criteria and funding logic.
For a young, innovation-driven company, this entails a substantial time commitment and requires in-depth knowledge of funding mechanisms and system logic in order to meaningfully align development stage, technology and funding instruments and make strategic choices.
The Chemie-Cluster Bayern supported Twogee Biotech in navigating the funding landscape in a structured manner, contributing its expertise at the interface of chemistry, biotechnology and public funding.
The collaboration focused on:
This structured approach led to the approval of the DBU Green Startup Grant by the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt(DBU).
Timeline:
“The targeted and practice-oriented support provided by Chemie-Cluster Bayern was a key success factor for us – from structuring the application content through to final submission. It made a significant contribution to our project being clearly assessed and positively approved within the DBU Green Startup Grant.”
Frank Wallrapp
Founder & CEO, Twogee Biotech
You are developing innovative solutions in the fields of chemistry, bioeconomy or technology – we support you with technical assessment, funding expertise and a strong network.
Whether funding orientation, application structuring or strategic project development: we support you in a focused, efficient and goal-oriented manner.
In the course of an international research cooperation, Prof. Dr. Nicolas Vogel from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg and his Japanese colleague Prof. Suji Fuji from the Osaka Institute of Technology have been jointly working on the production of so-called liquid marbles.
These liquid drops, stabilised by colloidal particles, offer the fascinating possibility of processing, formulating and storing liquid material like solid powder.
This and similar projects in the field of international research initiatives are supported by our cluster team through targeted funding advice, administrative content-related and strategic support during the application process as well as throughout the entire project term.
The company IRSA Lackfabrik relies on innovative products made from renewable materials. In cooperation with the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna, IRSA developed a bio-based water-soluble paint system that will replace conventional, heavy metal-based and organic solvent-based parquet floor paints with associated dangers to people and the environment.
Our long-standing collaboration with IRSA Lackfabrik includes apart from the identification of suitable funding opportunities the active support during the application preparation as well as the support and advice during the entire project.
For questions and further information, do not hesitate to contact Dr. Stefanie Vogel vogel@chemiecluster-bayern.
LimnoPlast, a Horizon 2020 funded EU-project that started in November 2019, approaches the topic of microplastics in freshwater ecosystems from a holistic perspective and therefore brings together the three very different disciplines environmental, technical and social sciences.
In the course of this Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (MSCA-ITN), 15 interdisciplinary young researchers from the fields of polymer and engineering sciences, toxicology and ecology, environmental, social and legal sciences as well as psychology are trained. They will investigate the origins of microplastics, its effects as well as technological and social solutions. Among other things, the sources and effects of microplastics on the freshwater ecosystems around the European urban areas of Aarhus, Amsterdam and Paris are being researched.
What distinguishes Limnoplast from similar previous studies is that besides studies on the direct impact of microplastics on people and the development of new polymers, the social scientific and economic aspects are also being examined – i.e. the effects of microplastics on society, the economy and, ultimately, on legal framework conditions.
The project’s aim is to strengthen interdisciplinary cooperation within Europe and to promote the dialogue between the industry, research institutions, policy makers and environmental organisations. In cooperation with 12 European project partners who are directly involved in the scientific funding and support of the doctoral students, another 12 partner organisations from science and industry are involved in the project which is coordinated by the University of Bayreuth.
Out contact office ConTact was significantly involved in the preparations and the coordination of the LimnoPlast project application. LimnoPlast was first submitted in 2015 as part of the EU’s “Excellent Science” program. Over the past four years, ConTact has organised administrative tasks, coordinated the entire consortium and provided advice and feedback on the resubmission of the application, which was eventually approved in 2019.
In close cooperation with the coordinator Prof. Dr. Christian Laforsch, Chemie-Cluster Bayern is taking over the project management for the next four years. In addition to the contract preparation with the European Commission, an underlying administrative project structure was established, and the first kick-off meeting was successfully conducted in November 2019.
More information about the project
For questions and further information, do not hesitate to contact Dr. Elisabeth Rieger rieger@chemiecluster-bayern.de or Christoph Habel habel@chemiecluster-bayern.de
