Brevel Turned an EIC Accelerator Grant Into a Microalgae Plant

Microalgae grow fast in sugar-fed fermenters, but in the dark they lose most of what makes them valuable. Brevel, a company founded by three brothers in Israel, puts the light inside the tank. In the European Innovation Council's October 2019 round the company was selected for blended finance, a grant plus EIC equity, to build its first factory around that idea, according to the European Commission's list of selected companies, which names Brevel of Rehovot as the only company in the project. The Horizon 2020 grant, signed on 26 March 2020, was worth €1,173,123 towards a total cost of €1,675,890, according to CORDIS.

The plan was a pilot factory producing 400 tonnes of biomass a year and a first product, a natural red pigment for salmon feed. Seven years later Brevel runs a commercial plant in Kiryat Gat in southern Israel, but it opened in June 2024, after the project had ended, and the salmon feed is gone. Brevel now sells a chlorella powder, develops a protein for food companies, and offers its lit fermenters to other start-ups as a service.

Where Brevel Stands Now

Brevel Ltd is an active private company that filed its annual report for 2026, according to the Israeli Corporations Authority's open company register; OpenCorporates shows the same status and the Kiryat Gat address. Israeli private companies do not publish their accounts, so revenue, losses and headcount cannot be checked. The last staff figure found is about 25 employees, given by Bizportal in July 2023.

The company is busy. In March 2026 it launched Purallis, a broken-cell chlorella powder that it calls its first commercial ingredient, aimed at supplements and food, with HACCP, FSSC 22000, kosher and halal certification, according to Food and Drink Technology and the company's product page. In June 2026 it won a $1.25 million grant from the Israel-US BIRD Foundation with the American start-up Ayana Bio to grow plant cells in its lit tanks, according to AgFunderNews, and announced trials with Coffeesai on cell-grown coffee, according to Food Ingredients First and FoodNavigator. Food Ingredients First also reports a $1 million grant from the Israel Innovation Authority to expand the platform.

The website now presents Brevel less as an algae protein company than as "the first and only illuminated fermentation platform", open to companies that grow microalgae, plant cells, yeast or bacteria, from benchtop work to production in "Brevel-led joint-venture manufacturing sites worldwide", according to its platform page. AgFunderNews reports joint ventures in India and with an Israeli industrial partner; their terms are not public. The reactor technology is the one the EIC funded; the products made with it have changed twice.

The Technology: Fermentation With the Lights On

Most commercial microalgae are grown outdoors in ponds or tubes. That needs land and sunlight, invites contamination and gives uneven quality. Some strains can instead be fed sugar in a dark steel fermenter, which is cheap and consistent, but, as Brevel's final EU report puts it, "in the absence of light, almost all of the benefits and ingredients of microalgae are simply lost." Brevel's closed, sterile reactors are lit from within and run "mixotrophic" cultivation, combining photosynthesis with fermentation. Its first EU project, a €50,000 SME Instrument Phase 1 study in 2018, described an internally illuminated bioreactor in which sunlight was to be carried in by optical fibre, according to CORDIS; the company now uses internal LED lighting, according to its technology page and AgFunderNews.

The performance claims are the company's own. Its EU application said the method had shown "more than 90% cost reduction and up to 200 higher yields per land" than outdoor photobioreactors; today the website advertises "X100 yields". Neither figure has been published in an independent study found for this article. The strain is a chlorella with GRAS status in the United States, but the extracted protein still needed its own regulatory approval, which Brevel said it was pursuing, according to Vegconomist. No approval of the protein has been announced.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The project ran from 1 February 2020 to 31 October 2022. Its objective on CORDIS was specific: "a first pilot factory capable of producing 400 tonnes of biomass annually will be constructed and the first use case of salmon feed supplements will be addressed to replace the current unsustainable synthetic alternative at comparable costs." The pigment in question is astaxanthin, which gives farmed salmon its pink colour.

The final report, for February 2021 to October 2022, credits real progress on the biology. Trout fed Brevel's algae reached the same commercial colour as fish on synthetic pigment after six weeks, and a larger trial gave "pigmentation 25% above market standards". The company filed three new patent applications. But the factory was not finished: "Due to Covid-19 delays, technical delays and slow financial markets, the construction of Brevel's commercial pilot facility has not been completed in the expected time and thus the validation of the commercial scale systems has not been fully achieved." Equipment was on site awaiting test runs. The same report says Brevel was "shifting focus" to protein for human food, a market its plan had listed only as a later step.

1. Feed trials with customersDeliveredTrout trials matched and then beat synthetic pigment, per the CORDIS report.
2. Commercial-scale reactor built and validatedLateNot finished by October 2022; a 5,000-litre plant opened in June 2024 and was still in test runs in November 2024, per Vegconomist.
3. 400 tonnes of biomass a yearNot shownThe company claims capacity of "hundreds of tons"; no production volume has been published.
4. Salmon feed pigment on the marketNot achievedDropped for food protein in 2022; no feed product has been announced since.
5. First commercial productDelivered latePurallis chlorella, launched March 2026.

The grant bought a working technology, better pigment results than planned and a team that later raised private money. It did not buy what it was written for: the factory came 19 months after the project closed and the salmon market was abandoned. The record is a partial delivery.

What Brevel Has Achieved Since the Award

The blended finance did turn into equity, though years later. In July 2023 Brevel closed an $18.5 million seed round led by NevaTeam Partners, which included $8.4 million raised in 2022 through grants and convertible loans, according to TechCrunch and Bizportal. Both name the EIC Fund as an investor, and Brevel appears in the official EIC Fund portfolio. The size of the EIC stake has not been published.

In March 2025 investors exercised warrants and added more than $5 million, taking the round to $25 million, with NevaTeam Partners, Siddhi Capital, the EIC Fund, Good Protein Fund, The Food Tech Lab and PVS Investments named, according to Calcalist and FoodNavigator. No Series A has been announced.

On the commercial side the record is a run of agreements rather than sales figures. In October 2022 Brevel and the Israeli vegan cheese maker Vgarden announced a cheese made with Brevel's protein, expected on shelves in 2023 according to FoodNavigator and in 2024 according to TechCrunch; no report of that cheese reaching shelves was found. In February 2025 Brevel signed a ten-year purchase agreement with CBC Group, Israel's largest beverage company and the local Coca-Cola franchisee, which also invested, according to AgFunderNews and Food Ingredients First. No CBC product with Brevel ingredients has been announced.

The Factory Gap

Brevel's commercial plant in Kiryat Gat covers 27,000 square feet and houses a 5,000-litre reactor, with room to grow to 30,000 litres, according to AgFunderNews. The big plant is still a plan. In September 2022 Brevel and Kibbutz Yotvata signed a memorandum for a 900,000-litre facility to make 3,000 tonnes of dry product a year, a quarter of it for export, according to FoodNavigator, and in 2023 TechCrunch reported a 900,000-litre facility planned for 2025. No such plant has been announced as built. In June 2026 Food Ingredients First reported that joint-venture manufacturing sites were planned for the end of 2027 or early 2028.

Why Europe Should Care

In November 2022 the Commission adopted "Towards a strong and sustainable EU algae sector", 23 actions to grow European algae production for food, feed and materials. In March 2024 its communication on boosting biotechnology and biomanufacturing named food supply and strategic autonomy among the reasons to scale industrial fermentation in Europe. Brevel's technology fits both. Its factories, though, are in Israel and its planned joint ventures in India; no European production site has been announced, so the EU's money and equity have so far built capacity outside the Union.

The Verdict

Brevel and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.