SoilSpark, a Bacillus licheniformis biostimulant, has been approved for sale in Belgium following regulatory approval. The active ingredient was grown in Zymofix’s bioreactor-based solid-state fermentation (SSF) platform as a proof point of the path from production to commercial product.
SoilSpark has been approved for sale in Belgium, demonstrating that products made in the Zyft platform meet the technical, manufacturing, and regulatory requirements necessary for real-world use in agriculture. Zymofix is a contract manufacturer, and this approval gives confidence to clients that their products will follow a smooth regulatory path.
SoilSpark is a microorganism-based plant biostimulant developed for in-furrow application at sowing. It combines Bacillus licheniformis with a substrate-based pellet carrier and is designed to support early root growth, crop establishment, nutrient-use efficiency and a more robust root zone. It can also reduce chemical fertiliser use by up to 30%.
How we make microbes at scale
Zymofix is a manufacturer, so commercialising our own product is not our core business, though this approval is significant beyond SoilSpark, because of how the product was made. An effective microbial product only becomes commercially viable if its microorganisms can be produced reliably and in the volumes the market needs, and that’s the problem our Zyft production technology is built to solve.
We use bioreactor-based solid-state fermentation (SSF), in which microorganisms grow on a solid substrate with little free water instead of in a liquid broth. Our SSF process is designed to provide a route from microbial development to industrial production, allowing us to us cultivate microorganisms under controlled conditions while maintaining the consistency and quality needed for downstream formulation.
We treat fermentation, formulation and manufacturing as connected stages of one development pathway, rather than separate processes. SoilSpark has now been through every stage: microbial development, formulation, production and regulatory approval.
What it took to get approval
Getting here meant bringing together the scientific, technical and regulatory work behind SoilSpark into a complete dossier, turning years of development into a product ready to take its next step towards the market.
To show that SoilSpark meets the requirements, our dossier brought together product characterisation, analytical data, efficacy and safety evidence, alongside the necessary regulatory documentation. The Belgian derogation process sets requirements including a minimum concentration of Bacillus bacteria, compliance with pathogen limits and specific labelling requirements.
What’s next for us
We plan to build products like SoilSpark for clients, following the same development approach, bringing together strain development, formulation, scalable SSF production, analytical work, efficacy testing and regulatory strategy. With demand for biological alternatives growing in agriculture and other industries, SoilSpark’s approval serves as another proof point that our SSF bioreactor technology can provide the manufacturing basis for a new generation of microbial products.
We’re proud of the team and everything that has gone into getting SoilSpark to this point. Our goal is to take promising biological technologies and do the work needed to turn them into products that can be used in the real world. SoilSpark is the first, and we’re excited about what comes next.
