Danish Scaleup ‘Again’ Is Shaping the Global Fight Against CO2 Emissions

Edited By : Tina Dastur

Did you know that 38% of funding in the Nordics went to impact startups in 2023??

These startups work to intentionally create positive change through their products and services and, with time, enable impact outcomes through proportionate impact management. Despite the overall slowdown in the venture capital funding market, impact startups have shown higher resilience than the overall market, with higher conversion rates to Series A (investing in a privately held startup with proven potential) and beyond (Danske Bank, 2023).

Danish Impact and DeepTech fund PreSeed Ventures (PSV) write in their latest PSV Paper that focusing on impact is crucial as it aligns with the need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and that more funds with impact as part of their portfolio are being raised.

Still, impact startups are not commonplace. According to Jes Broeng , the director of DTU Entrepreneurship and Board Member at PSV Foundry,

“Only a third of the ideas for companies and solutions are based on patents originating from the universities.”

Though rare, this scenario is not altogether unlikely, as evidenced by an impact startup that spun out of Copenhagen’s very own Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU) in 2021 and which is on course to solving the global CO2 problem with a novel biomanufacturing process that captures the unavoidable CO2 outputs from industry at source and reuses them to manufacture emission-free chemicals.?

So, if you’ve been thinking God’s green earth is doomed, think Again.?

In this edition of The RentCulture Newsletter, we hear from Torbj?rn ?lsh?j Jensen, co-founder of Again–a biotechnology scaleup that is combining millennia-old bacteria with new-age technology to ferment CO2 into carbon-negative chemicals and thereby ‘unpickle the planet’. To date, Again has raised over $100 million from top venture capital investors including grant funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme.

Starting Again

Even though ?lsh?j currently co-steers the ship at Again, a cursory glance at his LinkedIn profile will tell you that his professional beginnings were far removed from anything to do with science and laboratories.

In 1996, ?lsh?j worked as a car mechanic, maintaining and restoring cars considered collector’s items.

Fourteen years hence, in 2010, ?lsh?j was researching bacterial conversion as part of his doctoral studies at DTU when he was struck with the realisation that carbon emissions could be transformed into chemical building blocks for everyday products.?

A decade of research and trials later, Again was born with the intent to leverage the potential of biosolutions to solve global problems. In 2022, the company moved out of DTU - Technical University of Denmark and into S?borg’s Alfa Laval Innovation House and its 30-member-strong team today operates out of offices in Copenhagen and Berlin.

Denmark and biotechnology: What gives?

According to the Food & Bio Cluster Denmark, the biosolutions sector contributes DKK 13 billion to the Danish economy annually and is capable of reducing global CO2 emissions by up to 8% or more than four billion tonnes, and this is precisely why ?lsh?j believes that biosolutions will be “the next big thing, globally” and also why Again focuses its R&D on its untapped potential.?

Watch the video below where Torbj?rn and his fellow co-founder Max Kufner share insights from the journey so far.

While a number of scientific inventions often fail to make it out of university laboratories, Again has successfully managed to bring its novel biosolution to the outside world, where it can make a significant impact.

According to an article in the PSV paper, “DTU commercialised 81 inventions, launched 74 new startups and facilitated 1,173 research collaborations with outside companies in 2021 alone.”

?lsh?j notes that the environment for biotechnology research in Denmark is exciting. He credits this to the close relationship between academia and industry as well as to the level of investor awareness that has “encouraged many to launch their entrepreneurial journeys”.

According to this Forbes article, Again has a carbon transformation facility in Denmark and has an offtake agreement with the global chemical company HELM for low-carbon products.

The international impact

Academia, industry, and investing aside, Again owes a large part of its success to its vibrant international team, which features professionals from Romania, India, Brazil, Greece, Germany, and the US, over and above those from Denmark.

“From the get-go, we decided to hire globally,” says ?lsh?j, adding, “Our technology is novel, and there are a handful of people in the world who can help upscale our operations.” To this end, he shares that Again is committed to ensuring its international employees get the help they need in acquiring work permits, setting up a bank account, finding a place of residence, and other such crucial musts that ensure a smooth relocation and comfortable settling-in process.

“I always hoped that Again would make it big, but I could not have imagined being where we are today when we started, and that we have achieved such incredible results in a relatively short span of time is a testament to our team’s dedicated efforts,” says ?lsh?j.

The future is carbon-negative

“We are ready to further scale up our facilities and get our carbon-negative products into the market. We need to see these green products replacing fossil-based ones in our everyday lives,” insists ?lsh?j.

To learn more about Again, visit their website or follow them on LinkedIn.?

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