When Lallemand, the sprawling Canadian fermentation conglomerate, went looking for new production capacity in emerging markets, it found what it needed in an industrial park on Istanbul's outskirts. The target: Livzym Biotechnologies, a Turkish precision fermentation startup with ambitions that extend well beyond Turkey's borders.
Between late July and mid-August of 2024, Lallemand led an $11 million equity round into Livzym, securing not just a stake in the company but global distribution rights to its enzyme products. For Turkey, a country still heavily reliant on imported industrial enzymes, the deal represents something of a milestone. For Livzym, it's a chance to scale what remains a relatively small operation into something with international reach.
The investment brought together an unusual mix of backers: Lallemand (operating through its Swiss arm, Danstar Ferment AG), Turkish conglomerate Evyap Holding, Türk Telekom Ventures, and Startupİst Ventures. According to KPMG's year-end report on Turkish startup investments, published in December, the round valued Livzym at $60 million post-money, with investors collectively acquiring roughly 18.3% of the company.
The round's classification varies depending on who's counting. CB Insights calls it "Unattributed VC - II," dated July 30–31. KPMG labels it "Seed Stage," a designation that feels odd for a company founded a decade ago. No one, it seems, has definitively called it a Series A—though the valuation and investor profile suggest it might functionally be one. Livzym had previously raised $1 million from Türkiye Kalkınma Fonu, Turkey's state development fund, back in November 2022.
Beyond the Check
What makes the deal particularly intriguing isn't just the capital. Lallemand secured marketing and distribution rights across its global network, essentially grafting Livzym's fungal-based enzymes onto an established international sales machine. The enzymes themselves serve industries ranging from food processing and animal feed to textiles, leather, paper manufacturing, and detergents—sectors where biocatalysts are increasingly replacing harsher chemical processes.
For Lallemand, this fits a broader pattern. The company has been on something of an acquisition spree lately, snapping up BASF's bioenergy enzymes business last June and absorbing Evolva AG earlier in 2024. The Livzym partnership adds production capacity in a market where labor and operational costs run lower than in North America or Western Europe. It also potentially opens the door to contract manufacturing arrangements, something Livzym has offered alongside its own product lines.
Dr. Serdar Uysal, who founded Livzym in 2014 after earning his biochemistry PhD from the University of Chicago and spending time at Harvard Medical School, has long talked about reducing Turkey's dependence on imported enzymes. The country's industrial base still relies heavily on foreign suppliers for biocatalysts—a gap Uysal set out to fill when he launched the company.
Livzym's factory, tucked into Istanbul's Leather Organized Industrial Zone in the Tuzla district, opened in June 2020. Turkish government ministers showed up for the ribbon-cutting, framing the facility as critical import-substitution infrastructure. Whether the roughly dozen to fifty employees (exact headcount is hard to pin down; data sources vary and lack recent timestamps) constitute a transformation of Turkey's biotechnology sector remains an open question. But the facility does represent the country's first domestically built industrial enzyme plant, a point of some national pride.
Scaling Challenges Ahead
The new funding will go toward expanding that Tuzla facility. Livzym says it plans to increase capacity across enzymes, alternative proteins, precision fermentation outputs, and postbiotics. The company currently runs fermentation equipment ranging from small pilot systems—5-liter bench-scale units up to 6-cubic-meter vessels—to larger industrial tanks spanning 5 to 100 cubic meters, according to its website. It also offers contract services: strain development, process optimization, scale-up consulting.
Livzym has previously stated ambitions to export into Africa, Russia, and the Middle East, regions where enzyme markets remain less saturated than in Europe or North America. With Lallemand's marketing and distribution rights now in place through strategic cooperation with Livzym, those export plans may accelerate—assuming production can keep pace.
And that's where things get tricky. The global industrial enzymes market is estimated at $14.9 billion to $15.3 billion as of 2025. It's a competitive landscape dominated by giants like Novozymes (now part of Novonesis after its merger with Chr. Hansen), DuPont, DSM, and BASF. Lallemand itself is a major player, though privately held and less visible than its publicly traded competitors. Carving out market share means not just producing enzymes, but producing them at scale, at cost, and with consistent quality.
Precision fermentation—the method Livzym employs—has become something of a buzzword in biotech circles, particularly as industries hunt for greener alternatives to petroleum-derived chemicals. But buzzwords don't pay the bills. Manufacturing at commercial scale does. Livzym's partnership with Lallemand suggests the startup has cleared at least some technical hurdles; Lallemand isn't in the habit of backing unproven production platforms.
Still, questions linger. The company's employee count remains modest for a manufacturer with industrial-scale ambitions. Its previous funding—a single million-dollar seed round from a state fund—hardly positioned it to compete with incumbents spending tens of millions annually on R&D. This $11 million infusion changes the equation, but perhaps not as dramatically as it might seem. Building out fermentation capacity is expensive. So is maintaining it, staffing it, and keeping quality control rigorous enough to satisfy multinational buyers.
A Bet on Emerging Markets
For Lallemand, the investment looks less like a gamble on unproven technology and more like a calculated play for geographic diversification. Turkey sits at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East—a logistics sweet spot for companies eyeing export markets in regions where enzyme demand is growing but supply chains remain underdeveloped.
The deal also reflects a broader trend: Western biotech and ingredients companies increasingly partnering with or acquiring production assets in emerging markets, where costs run lower and governments often sweeten deals with subsidies or infrastructure support. Livzym benefited from state backing early on, and its facility's location in an organized industrial zone suggests it continues to enjoy regulatory or logistical advantages.
Whether Livzym can capitalize on those advantages—and on Lallemand's global reach—will likely determine if this $11 million round marks the beginning of a genuinely competitive Turkish enzymes industry or remains a well-intentioned but ultimately modest experiment in import substitution. The next year or two should clarify which path the company is on.
For now, at least, Livzym has something many biotechs never secure: a strategic partner with the capital, distribution network, and industry credibility to turn local production into international sales. That's no small thing. Making it work at scale? That's the harder part.
