Did GlasPort Bio's EIC Accelerator Slurry Additive Hit Its 98%?

Slurry tanks on dairy and pig farms are small methane factories: the microbes that break down stored manure release greenhouse gases for months before the slurry is spread. GlasPort Bio, a spin-out from what is now the University of Galway, told the European Innovation Council in 2020 that a powdered additive could stop almost all of it. Its proposal claimed that treated dairy manure "emitted >98% less GHG" in controlled trials, kept more nitrogen and raised biogas output by 38%, according to CORDIS.

The EIC selected the project, GasAbate N-plus, in the Green Deal cut-off of 19 May 2020 of the EIC Accelerator pilot, as a grant-only award, according to the Commission's list of selected companies, which names GlasPort Bio as the only company in the project. The EU contributed €2,478,231 to a €3,540,330 budget. Six years on, the additive is on sale, dosed by pumps on commercial farms in Ireland and continental Europe, and the company booked its first meaningful revenue in 2026. The number that sold the project, however, has not survived contact with the farm.

Where GlasPort Bio Stands in 2026

GlasPort Bio is an active company. The Irish company register lists Glasport Bio Limited as "Normal", with accounts for 2025 and an annual return filed on 15 June 2026, according to SoloCheck and Business Barometer, which both draw on the Companies Registration Office. The second also lists a special resolution and an allotment of new shares in autumn 2025, 11 shareholders and six directors. Neither page shows its balance sheet or headcount without a paid report.

Since February 2025 the company has been run by a listed parent. In December 2024 Roebuck Food Group, an Irish food business quoted in London, agreed to buy a controlling interest of 35% to 38.7% at a pre-money valuation of €12 million, partly by buying shares from the founders and partly by subscribing for new ones, according to its announcement and the Irish Farmers Journal. Roebuck's 2025 results say it paid €5.7 million for 37%, with a board majority, and has consolidated GlasPort as a subsidiary since 7 February 2025. Justin McCarthy, a former chief executive of the Irish Farmers Journal and a Roebuck executive, became GlasPort's chief executive. The company's feed additive for cattle was moved into a separate company, GlasPort Rumen Tech, in which Roebuck holds 16%.

Roebuck holds an option to raise its stake to 83% before staff share dilution, exercisable from 7 August 2026 to February 2029. With the first price milestone, a granted US patent, already met, exercising it would cost about £7.8 million, rising to about £12 million if further milestones are reached, according to Roebuck's interim results of 30 September 2026. Roebuck says it is still considering whether to exercise it, and that any exercise would need a further equity raise and shareholder approval. The same report says McCarthy becomes Roebuck's chief executive on 31 October 2026 while keeping his role at GlasPort.

The Technology: Stopping the Methane Microbes in the Tank

Stored manure accounts for around 15% of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, about 1.5% of the EU total, the project's CORDIS results summary says. The established fix is acidification, adding sulphuric acid to slurry, which the project coordinator, Aoife McCarthy, described there as "potentially hazardous and often energy intensive". GasAbate takes a different route: it targets the methanogens, the microbes that make methane, and leaves the rest of the manure microbiome working, so the slurry keeps more of its nitrogen and its energy value for a biogas plant. CORDIS describes the active ingredient only as "a well-studied chemical ingredient proven safe for humans, animals and the environment"; the composition is not public.

The product changed shape during the project. The 2020 proposal described a powdered tablet. By the end, GasAbate was a liquid dosed into tanks and lagoons "at specific time intervals" by automated pumps. The company now sells it as GasAbate+Compli360, a system that measures slurry levels, doses the additive and sends emissions data to the cloud for monitoring and verification, according to the company website.

The emissions figure depends on who measured it and how. In the EIC project's farm trial, with 220 cows, three slurry tanks and 485 to 590 cubic metres of slurry, methane fell by 80%, CORDIS reports. In January 2026 Carbon Trust Assurance, after reviewing several studies, found an average methane cut of 78% from cattle and pig manure "when used correctly", according to GlasPort Bio and Proactive Investors. In June 2026 a peer-reviewed study by AFBI and Queen's University Belfast, run for 134 days at a commercial-scale storage facility, found a 48% cut in methane and an 18% cut in ammonia at 65% of the recommended dose, according to the company's summary; the full-dose result is not given there. None of these comes close to the "more than 98%" in the proposal, which referred to all greenhouse gases in controlled trials.

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

GasAbate N-plus ran from 1 August 2020 to 31 July 2023, and the grant agreement was signed on 1 September 2020. The objective was "to complete the remaining pre-commercial and technology validation work required to bring GasAbate N+ to the point of market launch in 2023". The work plan, as described in the published report, covered large-scale manufacturing, farm-scale efficacy trials, a regulatory dossier for the European Chemicals Agency under REACH, and a commercial launch plan. That report is labelled as covering the second period, to July 2023, but its text describes the state of the project at month 12: a 1-tonne batch made, a launch plan written and farm trials at Teagasc under way. The closing results are in the CORDIS summary instead.

1. Large-scale manufacturingDelivered1-tonne batch to specification in year one, per the CORDIS report.
2. Farm-scale validationDelivered80% methane cut on a 220-cow farm; trials with the Danish Technological Institute and Penn State.
3. More than 98% lower greenhouse gas emissionsNot achievedFarm-scale methane cuts of 80% (project), 78% (Carbon Trust) and 48% at a reduced dose (AFBI).
4. 38% more biogasDelivered38% with cattle slurry in a 270,000-litre reactor, per the results summary.
5. Regulatory dossier and market launch in 2023PartlyOn sale in Ireland "after meeting regulatory requirements" by January 2024; recurring revenue only from late 2025. No REACH dossier is published on CORDIS.

On the engineering side the project did what it set out to do: the additive was made at scale, tested on commercial farms and launched. The project also produced two peer-reviewed papers in the Journal of Cleaner Production, in 2022 and 2023, listed on the CORDIS results page. The launch, though, did not turn into sales quickly. GlasPort's combined business, which then still included the feed additive, had revenue of €31,999 and a loss before tax of €437,446 in the year to 30 June 2024, a year after the project ended, Roebuck's December 2024 announcement shows. And the 98% headline, the project's strongest selling point, was not reproduced at scale.

Since the Award: Farms, Processors and First Revenue

The route to market runs through dairy processors. Carbery Group installed the first system on Shinagh, the farm of its Farm Zero C project in West Cork, about four years before February 2026, and GlasPort rolled it out to nine more Carbery farms in 2025 with support from Climate KIC, chief executive Justin McCarthy told The Southern Star. When Ireland's agriculture minister, Martin Heydon, visited Shinagh in September 2026, GlasPort said 10 Carbery farms used the system, almost 20 more were due to join, and farmers in Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and France had adopted it, according to the company. It expects almost 100 farms and 500,000 tonnes of treated slurry by the end of 2026. Roebuck's 2025 results describe pilot installations with three dairy processors in Ireland, the UK and Scandinavia, without naming them.

The sales are new. GlasPort moved from pre-commercial to recurring revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025, Roebuck said in its 2025 results, and booked £264,000 in the first half of 2026 against nil a year earlier, its interim results show. Roebuck expects 40 to 45 more installations in the second half of 2026 and coverage of 15,000 dairy cows and 500 sows by the end of the year. The interim report also names the risk: "The pace of this regulatory process can be slow given the novel nature of our GasAbate technology."

The Money

GlasPort's loss grew from £378,000 in the first half of 2025 to £896,000 in the first half of 2026, as administrative costs rose to £808,000 from £461,000 and grant income fell to £111,000 from £242,000, according to Roebuck's interim results, which say cash burn will rise in the second half. Roebuck itself had £1.16 million in cash at 30 June 2026 and drew down a €1 million loan in March 2026, later repaid from a sale and leaseback. Beyond Roebuck's €5.7 million, GlasPort secured €1.85 million of non-dilutive grants in 2025, according to Proactive Investors and Roebuck's 2025 results. No venture capital round by GlasPort itself could be found.

GlasPort Bio is not in the EIC Fund portfolio, whose 319 listed companies were checked for this article; that fits a grant-only award. CORDIS lists three later EU projects with GlasPort as a participant: it is a beneficiary of ReBioCycle, a Circular Bio-based Europe project on bioplastics upcycling coordinated by University College Dublin, with an EU contribution of €107,250, and an unfunded partner in two Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral networks, LeAD, on anaerobic digestion, and CeSuds, on sewage sludge, due to start in February 2027.

Why Europe Should Care

Energy, agriculture and waste account for around 95% of methane emissions from human activity, the Commission said when it adopted its methane strategy on 14 October 2020, a few weeks after the GasAbate grant was signed. The strategy promised better reporting of farm emissions and support for "innovative methane-reducing technologies" through the Common Agricultural Policy. The EU also co-launched the Global Methane Pledge in 2021, which aims to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030. A slurry treatment that cuts methane without forcing farmers to shrink herds speaks directly to that goal, and keeps the slurry's value as fertiliser and biogas feedstock inside European farming.

The commercial hook is just as clear: Roebuck's option price rises if GasAbate is accepted in Ireland's national greenhouse gas inventory, or if a multinational food processor makes it a criterion for paying farmers a sustainability premium. That is where the 78% figure, rather than the 98% one, will be tested.

The Verdict

GlasPort Bio has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.