How Food Brewer uses Watson Marlow peristaltic pumps and tubing to advance cell based cocoa production

Watson‑Marlow pumps deliver sterile, flexible and contamination‑free media processing for next‑generation plant cell culture

Food Brewer AG leverages Watson‑Marlow peristaltic pumps and tubing to deliver the sterility, ease‑of‑use and processing versatility required for media preparation and media filtration in its pilot production of cell‑based cocoa.

Food Brewer uses natural plant cells to grow cocoa and coffee powder at its pilot plant near Zurich in Switzerland. The start-up company takes cells from a cocoa bean and cultivates them into a cell culture. Once the culture reaches the required quality, it is transferred into a bioreactor, where the cells grow in a nutrient rich medium before being harvested, dried, and roasted into cocoa powder. AI assisted cell selection ensures only the best cells are transferred to the bioreactor.

To maintain sterility and efficiency throughout its upstream workflow, Food Brewer utilises compact, contamination free Watson Marlow 530 and 630 series peristaltic pumps fitted with Watson Marlow PureWeld XI tubing. The pump and tubing combination supports three critical upstream applications:

• Media preparation: Accurate formulation and mixing of cell culture media, which supplies essential nutrients for cocoa cell growth
• Media filtration: Removal of particulates and microorganisms from prepared media before it enters the bioreactor, ensuring sterility and protecting delicate plant cells
• Inoculation preparation: Transferring cells from one bioreactor to the next larger scale bioreactor

Food Brewer is using Watson-Marlow pumps with a Kuhner orbital shaken bioreactor (OSB) SB2500-Z, which it installed in late 2025 and has a working volume of 500 to 2500 litres. Food Brewer has previously used Watson-Marlow panel-mount pumps integrated into bioreactors manufactured by Krones/Steinecker, Cytiva and Getinge.

Klaus Kienle, Co-Founder and Chief Production Officer at Food Brewer, said: “We love our Watson-Marlow pumps, they are reliable, flexible and do a fantastic job.

“We currently use the pumps two or three times per week and mostly for media preparation, media filtration. We use the pumps to filter through the media into the various sizes, up to 1000 litres and soon even more.

“The Watson-Marlow 630 pump is used mostly for production of cocoa, and the 530 pump is used for smaller production including other plant cells like coffee.

“We were looking for pumps that could be used in a sterile environment. Our plant cells are very humble and modest. They can tolerate a lot, but sterility is key because if bacteria gets in, it overgrows the cells.

“We also wanted to have versatility. With the two pumps we can cover the range from a small shake flask up to 1000+ litres, no problem. That’s why we upgraded from the 530 pump to the 630 pump.

“We’re not on the full pharmaceutical manufacturing side with full GMP, but the closed fluid path is still helpful because we’re using dedicated tubing for the applications, so one for cocoa, one for coffee.

“Flexibility and user friendly operation are essential. Several people use the pumps, in different positions about our facility, with low instruction. The pump has helped make the filtration process cheaper and more reliable, and we are able to easily move it about our pilot plant.

“The pumps have helped to significantly improve processability in the smaller scale. We process much more in a shorter time with lower errors with the Watson-Marlow pumps compared to the previous processing step with suction pumps.

“Easily adjusting the speed is key because we’ve been using the pump in an extremely wide range. We upgraded to the larger 630 pump because we needed to, but we’ve been processing hundreds of litres with the 530 pump as well, from millilitres to hundreds of litres.

“We had a Watson-Marlow pump on trial and it did a fantastic job for us which helped convince us to go for the pumps and work it into our budget, and this process was important as we are a start-up.”

Food Brewer’s lab-grown cocoa is a sustainable alternative to the traditional farming method of producing chocolate on cocoa plantations. Rising temperatures, water scarcity, and declining pollination rates have placed increasing strain on global cocoa supplies. By growing cocoa independently of climate, land, and seasonality, Food Brewer provides a future‑proof production model.

Major Swiss chocolate-maker Lindt & Sprüngli entered a partnership with Food Brewer in 2025, and Food Brewer aims to expand its portfolio beyond cocoa.

Kienle added: “Cacoa is our starting culture, coffee was the second, but we have much more so we are actually having a plant cell cultivation platform in our portfolio. We are concentrating on cacao , but we’ve built a platform for extreme fast plant cell culture development, including in the large-scale processing. These have the advantage that you’re environmental independent. You can put your factory right next to the production company, in our case our investor Lindt in Switzerland, where they could put the bioreactors right next to their chocolate manufacturing supply, and then they’re producing what they need on a daily basis, reliably without the use of pesticides and environmental impact.

“Our goal is to be price competitive to normal conventional chocolate, in the single digit per kilogram, and we are not far from it. With our current pilot plant we have a total capacity of 6000 litres.”

Food Brewer is in the process of scaling up its production and aims to bring its cell-based chocolate to market in late 2026, by latest 2027.

The 530 series peristaltic pump delivers flow rates from 0.004 mL/min (0.0006 USGPH) to 3.5 L/min (55.48 USGPH) while the 630 provides flow rates from 0.001 L/min (0.0002 USGPM) to 18 L/min (4.76 USGPM) depending on model and pumphead/tubing options.