(Find press release below article)

Tackling food loss where it actually happens

Before food reaches a factory, supermarket or café, a significant share is already lost. An estimated 15.3% of global food production disappears at the farm stage, largely due to fruits and vegetables that spoil within hours or days of harvest.

Existing stabilisation methods, such as drying, cooling or on-site processing, are often too costly, complex or impractical for daily farm operations. Luvi Bio asks itself: what if we could intervene where this loss begins?

Fermentation technology designed for the farm, not the lab

Luvi Bio has developed a microbial biosolution that stabilises crops and edible sidestreams directly on the farm, reducing loss while preserving nutritional and sensory value at origin. The resulting biomass can then be transformed into functional ingredient bases for the food and beverage industry.

The company’s first application focuses on a sidestream from one of the world’s most traded commodities: coffee cherry pulp.

Coffee: a global commodity, a massive sidestream

Only half of the coffee plant ends up in a cup. The remaining pulp from the coffee cherry, amounting up to around 26 million tonnes each year, is typically discarded. To give a reference, this is an amount equivalent to the entire EU’s annual banana consumption.

What a waste. This pulp is naturally rich in antioxidants, caffeine, colour pigments and prebiotic potential. Yet its rapid spoilage has made large-scale commercialisation nearly impossible.

“Coffee cherry pulp is a superfruit hiding in plain sight,” says Therese Scherer, Co-Founder & CEO of Luvi Bio. “It’s not that the material lacks value, it just decays too quickly for anyone to capture it. We built Luvi Bio to turn that moment of loss into value creation.”

Unlocking a new ingredient supply

Until now, coffee cherry pulp has mainly been available as a dried product, which is a labour-intensive, weather-dependent process with inconsistent quality. Luvi Bio’s fermentation approach captures the pulp at peak freshness, creating a stable, scalable ingredient supply suitable for global beverage innovation.

This innovation meets a rapidly growing market. The global caffeinated beverage segment is expected to reach USD 463.3 billion by 2032, driven by demand for cleaner labels, natural energy sources and better flavour. Coffee-cherry-based ingredients offer a compelling new pathway.

“For us, the focus wasn’t just stabilising coffee cherry pulp, but capturing its freshness,” says Louise, Founder of Kost Studio and Head of Venture. “Fermentation became a way to deliver consistency, flavour and functionality at a scale.”

A success story of the Kost Studio × Kost Capital venture model

From left: Louise Beck Brønnum, co-founder of Kost Studio, Therese Scherer, co-founder of Luvi Bio, and Bodil Sidén, general partner of Kost Capital.

Luvi Bio is the latest spinout from the partnership between Kost Studio and Kost Capital. Our venture model is a unique collaboration which connects early science, product excellence and venture building.

How does it work in practice?

Kost Capital identifies the commercial opportunity, shapes the venture thesis and funds early R&D. Kost Studio co-develops the technology with the founding team, bringing deep expertise in sensory science, product development and applied R&D to align innovation with consumer needs from day one.

“We don’t just fund ideas — we engineer pathways from science to product to market,” says Bodil Sidén, General Partner at Kost Capital. “Luvi Bio shows how microbial innovation, sensory excellence and a strong commercial thesis can unlock entirely new ingredient categories.”

Far and beyond: coffee cherry to a broader ingredient platform

Luvi Bio’s initial focus is an origin-side pilot and a functional beverage ingredient developed with partners in natural sodas and ready-to-drink formats, with Kost Studio leading application development and sensory validation.

But the long-term vision extends far beyond coffee.

“Many of the world’s most wasted crops share the same challenge, that they spoil before they can become something valuable,” says Scherer. “We focus on edible, nutritionally relevant biomass and use fermentation to stabilise it early, so its functional properties can be retained and developed into viable ingredients.”

We’re excited to follow Luvi Bio’s journey going forward and see it being applied to more overlooked ingredients.

Press release

Download press release here: Danish (<- link) | Link: English (<- link)

Press photos (<- link)

Press Contact

Kost Studio / Kost Capital
Name: Louise Beck Brønnum
Email: louise@koststudio.com
Website: https://www.kostgroup.co/

Luvi Bio
Name: Therese Scherer, Co-founder and CEO
Email: therese@luvi.bio
Phone: +45 2873 8684
Website: http://luvi.bio