How Does Cibus Nexum Help Startups and Scaleups?
We help you grow your business efficiently, keep costs and capex down, and move forward with confidence and flexibility.
Taking a product from development to large-scale manufacturing is tough for food startups and scale-ups. Many promising ideas stall due to surprise costs, risks, or technical hurdles. Cibus Nexum helps you tackle these issues with our FoodFlow Method, guiding you from technical validation to launch. As your independent partner, we connect you with the right manufacturers and offer clear strategies and industry expertise to turn your ideas into investor-ready products.
Common Challenges for Food Startups and Scale-ups
Food startups and scale-ups face many hurdles when moving from proof of concept to full-scale production. Lab methods that work for small batches often become inefficient and costly at larger scales. Strict EU rules on food safety, labelling, and packaging add more complexity.
Manufacturers often require minimum order sizes that are too large for startups, leading to higher costs and shelf-life issues. Protecting intellectual property is also a major concern, as founders worry about losing their recipes or processes when outsourcing. Limited budgets make things harder, since building a factory is expensive and slow, and initial production runs can generate a lot of waste. Many contract manufacturers also lack the R&D skills needed for new products, so finding the right technical partners is crucial.
How Cibus Nexum helps emerging companies
Cibus Nexum helps food startups and scale-ups move quickly and confidently from validation to large-scale production. With our FoodFlow Method, we make sure your manufacturing plan aligns with your business goals, find the best technical partners, and help you scale from lab to industry.
We recommend asset-light models to save capital, request detailed cost breakdowns to control margins, and connect you with CDMOs with strong R&D skills. We also help protect your IP, secure your supply chain, and guide you through EU regulations. With Cibus Nexum as your partner, you avoid costly mistakes, move faster, and reach commercial scale in just 6 to 9 months with a business case that builds investor confidence.
Services and Solutions
Cibus Nexum offers tailored services to help startups and scale-ups move from lab concept to market launch. Our services include asset-light upscaling for fast and flexible industrial entry, contract manufacturer scouting to find the best partners, business development and sales support to speed up market entry and growth, innovation support with Proxy Foods' AI platform for faster product development, and strategic consulting for commercial strategy, industrialisation, and supply chain setup. Each service is adapted to your current stage and helps you reach your next milestone efficiently.
Asset-Light Upscaling
Cibus Nexum helps food startups and scale-ups achieve fast, asset-light upscaling, guiding you from pilot to full industrial production without heavy capital investment. With the FoodFlow Method, we help you avoid the costly, slow process of building your own factory by leveraging agile co-manufacturing and careful planning, cutting time-to-market. We bridge the technical gap from lab to industrial scale. With Cibus Nexum, your manufacturing strategy aligns with your commercial goals, investment plan, and future exit, delivering speed, flexibility, and the confidence investors want.
Contract manufacturing scouting, screening & onboarding
Cibus Nexum makes contract manufacturer scouting and outsourcing easier for food startups and scale-ups by designing production networks that fit your commercial goals and distribution needs. Instead of just choosing the nearest or cheapest factory, we do EU-wide, anonymous scouting to find and compare potential partners based on efficiency, automation, shelf-life, and distribution connections.
Our process gives you a shortlist of validated manufacturers, so you can compare costs, technical fit, including whether a CDMO or standard CMO is best, and quality certifications. We protect your IP through confidential outreach and set up hybrid or black box supply chains when needed. By focusing on detailed cost breakdowns and technical screening, Cibus Nexum helps you avoid rushed or unsuitable manufacturing partnerships, so you can build a strong, cost-effective, and scalable production setup that supports your growth and market strategy.
Sales & Business Development
Cibus Nexum helps food, beverage, and food tech companies accelerate commercial growth through targeted business development support. Through our extensive network of producers, retailers, distributors, and strategic partners, we help these companies enter new markets faster, unlock commercial opportunities, and build a foundation for sustainable long-term success.
Using our international network, we identify and validate manufacturing, retail, and distribution partners that align with your product requirements, growth goals, and route-to-market strategy. From initial outreach to final introduction, our team manages the process end to end, providing a shortlist of carefully screened, NDA-protected candidates and supporting the development of strong pitches for both producers and retailers.
Beyond introductions, we provide ongoing sales support and partner management to keep opportunities moving forward efficiently. Acting as your main point of contact, we streamline communication, reduce administrative burden, and help structure high-value partnerships, including manufacturer collaborations, joint ventures, and licensing opportunities.
By aligning your production and supply chain with the right commercial channels, Cibus Nexum helps you secure the partnerships, market access, and sales momentum needed for successful launches and sustainable expansion.
Innovation as a Service (Powered by Proxy Foods)
Cibus Nexum speeds up innovation for food startups and scale-ups with Innovation as a Service, powered by Proxy Foods' AI platform. By combining our industrial upscaling expertise with advanced predictive tools, we help you go from concept to pilot-ready prototype in days, not months.
The platform enables rapid formulation and optimisation by simulating sensory outcomes, benchmarking against top products, predicting shelf-life and stability, and ensuring regulatory compliance worldwide.
Our experts work with your team to co-develop and refine recipes, using AI to optimise cost, yield, and ingredient choices, and to simulate industrial processes to ensure your formulations are ready for scale-up. By bringing together scattered R&D data and applying decision-grade analytics, Cibus Nexum helps you deliver a commercially viable, investor-ready solution faster, reducing risk, cutting costs, and preparing you for industrial production.
Consulting for Food Startups and Scale-ups
Cibus Nexum offers hands-on consulting to help food startups and scale-ups move from lab concept to industrial reality, focusing on agile upscaling and commercial strategy. We work closely with founders to match their business model with the right manufacturing and supply chain approach. Our team conducts thorough make-or-buy assessments, benchmarks partners across Europe, and designs IP-secure supply chains using split-processing or black-box models.
We provide cost transparency with detailed breakdowns, manage the technical jump from pilot to industrial scale, and help you prepare for investor review by building a strong, credible business case. With a clear industrialisation roadmap that addresses risks such as minimum production quantities, waste, and changes to raw materials, Cibus Nexum gives you the guidance and confidence to scale profitably and attract investment.
Case Studies: Real-World Impact of Cibus Nexum
Cibus Nexum's expertise is best illustrated through real-world case studies that showcase how their independent guidance, technical expertise, and strategic approach deliver results for startups and scale-ups.
GOOD GOOD: Scaling a Low-Carb Peanut Butter Line
The Icelandic brand GOOD GOOD wanted to launch a keto-friendly peanut butter in the U.S., but faced high local production costs and technical challenges with the carbohydrate content, which threatened the "keto" claim. Cibus Nexum's team solved the technical issue and, after careful benchmarking, found a highly automated Dutch manufacturer that offered the best cost and quality, even though many expected lower-wage countries to be cheaper. The product is now sold in thousands of U.S. stores.
La Vie: IP Protection through Split-Processing
For the French plant-based brand La Vie, protecting proprietary processing knowledge during scale-up was crucial. Cibus Nexum created a split-processing model, making the sensitive semi-finished product through a joint venture and sending it to regional hubs for the final steps. This approach protected their IP without limiting scalability.
These case studies show how Cibus Nexum helps clients solve technical challenges, reduce costs, protect intellectual property, and enter the market quickly and successfully.
Frequently Asked Questions about scaling your innovation:
How does Cibus Nexum handle intellectual property and confidentiality concerns?
We adhere to strict confidentiality agreements and ensure that intellectual property rights are respected and protected throughout our collaboration.
How flexible are Cibus Nexum's services to adapt to specific client needs?
Our services are highly customizable. We work closely with our clients to understand their unique needs and tailor our services accordingly.
What is the level of involvement required from our company when working with Cibus Nexum?
We aim to minimize your workload. Our team takes on the heavy lifting, allowing you to focus on core business activities, while still keeping you informed and involved in key decisions.
How do I secure my IP when working with a co-packer?
Firstly, when collaborating with our clients, Cibus Nexum is used to arranging mutual NDAs to protect their IP.
Secondly, our clients value our independent position to start engaging with external resources and potential contract manufacturers anonymously, limiting access to sensitive details.
Last but not least, we help our clients design the best-fit supply and production chains that allow for IP securitization, preventing co-packers from replicating their products.
Our impartial approach ensures your proprietary formulas and processes stay confidential while enabling safe outsourcing.
Need expert IP protection? We've got you covered.
What does asset-light scaling mean?
Asset-light scaling means growing production capacity without necessarily investing in and owning the complete manufacturing infrastructure yourself. Instead, we help identify and develop the right external production capabilities, technologies and partners. This can reduce capital requirements, increase flexibility and allow companies to focus investment on innovation, brand development and commercial growth.
At what stage can Cibus Nexum become involved?
The sooner the better !
We can become involved from the early innovation stage through to industrialisation and commercial growth. This can include feasibility assessment, recipe and process development, pilot trials, manufacturer searches, production scale-up, process validation, shelf-life testing, commercial negotiations, business development and market expansion.
How do you select manufacturing and technology partners?
We start with the requirements of the product, process, market and (future) business model. We then assess potential partners based on success factors such as technological capabilities, capacity, quality systems, scalability, commercial fit, confidentiality, market interests and strategic alignment. The objective is not simply to find available production capacity, but to identify a partner capable of supporting sustainable growth.
Can Cibus Nexum help us scale from laboratory or pilot production to industrial production?
Yes. Scaling food production often requires more than increasing batch size. Ingredients, processing parameters, equipment, heat transfer, mixing, filling and packaging can all behave differently at industrial scale. We help translate products and processes into commercially viable production through pilot trials, test productions, recipe adjustments, process optimisation and validation.
How do you help protect intellectual property when working with external partners?
IP protection is considered throughout partner selection, development and scale-up. Depending on the project, this can include confidentiality agreements, controlled information sharing, compartmentalisation of know-how, contractual protection and careful management of recipes, processing parameters and proprietary technologies. The appropriate approach depends on where the competitive advantage resides within the product or process.
When should a startup start looking for a manufacturing partner?
Ideally before the product is completely locked. Industrial manufacturing capabilities or constraints can influence recipe design, processing conditions, packaging and cost structure. Involving manufacturing considerations in the scaling roadmap early can prevent expensive reformulation and delays when moving from development to commercial production.
Should we build our own factory or outsource production?
For many startups and scaleups, outsourced production can reduce capital requirements and provide faster access to industrial capabilities. Building a factory can offer greater control but requires significant investment, technical expertise, management capacity and utilisation. We help companies evaluate both scenarios based on their technology, expected volumes, margins, growth strategy and long-term competitive advantage.
How can Cibus Nexum help us find the right co-manufacturer?
We translate your product and business requirements into a manufacturing profile and identify potential partners based on technology, capacity, certifications, volumes, geography, commercial fit and growth potential. We can also support discussions, confidentiality arrangements, trials, scale-up and negotiations.
For more information: take a good look at our FoodFlow (R) method !
What if our current recipe does not work at industrial scale?
That is a common scale-up challenge. A product developed in a kitchen, laboratory or pilot environment may behave differently on industrial equipment. We can help identify the cause, modify processing parameters or formulations where necessary, and organise pilot or test productions before full commercialisation.
How do we avoid becoming dependent on one manufacturer?
Dependency can be reduced through careful partner selection, contractual arrangements, documentation, ownership of critical know-how and, where appropriate, second-source strategies. It's also important to distingish upstream and downstream processing to design the best fit supply chain. We help clients understand which capabilities are genuinely unique and which parts of the production chain should remain transferable.
Can Cibus Nexum help us prepare for rapid growth?
Yes. We assess whether your manufacturing setup, supply chain, technology and partner network can support anticipated growth. This can include identifying future capacity requirements, alternative production locations, larger-scale technologies, cost improvements and additional manufacturing partners before capacity becomes a bottleneck.
How can we protect our recipe or technology when approaching manufacturers?
The protection strategy depends on what makes the product unique. We can help structure confidentiality, information disclosure and co-development processes so potential partners receive enough information to evaluate the project without unnecessarily exposing proprietary knowledge.
Can you help us with business development as well as production?
Yes. Scaling production only creates value when it is connected to commercial opportunity. We can support market positioning, business development, partner introductions, channel exploration and commercial strategy alongside manufacturing and technology development.
How can AI support our innovation process?
AI can accelerate areas such as market exploration, competitive landscaping, ingredient and technology research, opportunity mapping and concept development. Our approach combines these capabilities with food industry expertise so that ideas are evaluated against real-world manufacturing, regulatory and commercial constraints.
Are we too early-stage to work with Cibus Nexum?
Not necessarily. Early involvement can be valuable when important technology, manufacturing and business-model decisions are still flexible. We can help assess feasibility and determine the most appropriate development route before significant capital is committed.
Can you help us attract the right type of customers?
Yes. Rather than focusing only on generic lead generation, we look at where your production capabilities create genuine competitive value. We can help define attractive target markets, product categories and customer profiles and support business development toward opportunities that fit your operations. We have a very target driven playbook to execute such.
What is the FoodFlow® Method?
The FoodFlow® Method is Cibus Nexum's structured approach for developing a contract manufacturing setup and bringing it through to commercial launch. It guides a project through four connected phases: Design, Find, Onboard and Launch.
The process starts by defining the product, packaging, supply-chain and manufacturing requirements, continues with identifying and validating suitable co-manufacturers, and then moves through technical and commercial onboarding toward an operational manufacturing setup and first production run. The method is structured, but it can be adapted to the specific needs of the project.
Ready to Scale Up?
Contact us to discuss your scaling and outsourcing needs. Once you reach out, our team will respond promptly to schedule a discovery call. In this call, we'll talk about your goals, challenges, and plans. Then, we'll assess your needs and suggest next steps, including a tailored action plan or proposal.
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