Sami has just supported Onima with carrying out an LCA for your product, debittered brewer's yeast, using the Diag Ecodesign device. What was your initial objective?

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We wanted to measure the impact of our product according to different industrialization hypotheses and identify the first levers of ecodesign.

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The second objective was to have environmental indicators that were not estimates on our part but rather numerical and precise elements obtained thanks to the expertise of a third party. The challenge is to then be able to share these indicators with our stakeholders. It is very important to show the companies we work with but also to our investors that working on our environmental impact is an essential subject for us and that we have good results.

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Why did you choose Sami to support you on this mission?

We felt very much in line with Sami's environmental values, that's a first element. Then, the responsiveness of your teams and the first exchanges, which went very well, finally convinced us. It happened very quickly.

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What are the strengths that you take away from our support?

We were almost surprised by the quality of your support, in particular by the comprehensive supervision of the project that you provided. From the training of the teams to the rendering of the deliverables, including the collection of data, everything was carried out extremely well. And we really appreciated the quality of the exchanges and the clarity of the consultants.

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What were your teams trained on?

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For the LCA part, we had an in-house team working on the project and this team was trained by Sami at LCA. This made it possible to move forward more quickly on this subject and to increase internal skills.

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The advantage of your approach is that the LCA was carried out prior to large-scale production. Why this choice?

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Indeed, we are still in the industrialization phase. The advantage of doing this LCA at this time is to be able, thanks to the results of the mission, to guide our technical choices in order to minimize our environmental impact from the beginning of the transition to the industrial scale. So we wanted to model the environmental impacts of different industrialization scenarios.

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Has working on your environmental impact been a major challenge since the creation of your company?

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Onima is based on the desire to offer more sustainable alternatives for our planet and our health. And since the beginning, the impact of our product has been the major challenge in our development. This is why it was so important to do this LCA before the industrialization phase.

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What do you remember from the LCA results?

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The first important result is that the product manufacturing process, in particular the treatment of production waste, has a very strong impact. At the same time, the production of raw materials, which are co-products of the food industry, is also a challenge for us.

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And on the subject of raw materials, with equal function, we had several possibilities and we were able to identify the one with the best results from an environmental point of view.

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Finally, for the energy part of the industrial process, we compared several scenarios. We expected the results but we wanted to measure very precisely the difference in impact according to the energies used.

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We also worked with you on the ecodesign of your yeast. What was at stake?

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The objective was to determine which changes to our process are both feasible from a technical point of view and which will allow us to reduce the impact of our yeast.

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Sami organized several workshops with the teams and we were able to identify several levers, in particular the modification of some of our raw materials and the valorization of our waste into animal feed. These are two very promising solutions for reducing our impact.

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Did the results of the LCA enrich your thoughts on ecodesign?

Completely and it is in the best interest of carrying out these two missions at the same time. LCA makes it possible to measure our environmental impact. The advantage then is to be able to minimize it and this includes eco-design. This is the concrete, operational part that comes from the LCA.

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How are you going to translate the results of LCA and the work on ecodesign from an operational perspective?

Now that we have identified the items that have the most environmental impact, we will work on this as a priority, in particular thanks to the two ecodesign levers identified, on raw materials and the valorization of our waste. We will evaluate the implementation of these levers in the laboratory and then come and evaluate and apply them on an industrial scale, these are our next steps.

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What are the other steps now in your ecodesign strategy?

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We are going to set up a committee whose primary function will be to update the LCA according to the changes in the industrial process expected in the coming months. Our process is evolving a lot.

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The second role of this committee will be to monitor the implementation of the levers already identified but also to continue working on other ways and to assess their feasibility and implementation.

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This is a work that we will carry out continuously and especially behind the background of the work on our process in order to always think about the environmental optimization of our product.

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Have you set numerical goals?

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We know the environmental footprint of our process as it is today. And we also now know the footprint of an optimized process by applying all the levers of ecodesign. So the objective is to get as close as possible to this footprint. But the technical feasibility of certain approaches is still to be evaluated.