CEO and Founder of Winely, Jacob Manning, describes himself as a serial entrepreneur in biotechnology and AI, propelled by his passion for using technology to answer and provide solutions for some of the deepest mysteries in biology.
"I believe fermentation will change the world. This belief drives my passion for Winely and Exocule,"
"I believe fermentation will change the world. This belief drives my passion for Winely and Exocule," said Manning.
Manning is an ex-accountant who left the field to build his first company in biotechnology, centred on supporting horticulturalists' transition to organic practices. He grew up in rural New Zealand and greatly respects the primary industry. However, he said that it has become increasingly apparent that New Zealand needs to move towards sustainable horticulture-style techniques.
Manning built biological products that helped bridge the transition from intensive chemical practice to organic.
"What does this have to do with fermentation? We must feed an ever-growing population but can't continue intensive horticulture practices without damaging our environment."
Manning described precision fermentation, which allows products, from food to fibres, to be built using yeast instead of requiring land and intensive practices. This technology has great potential to change the horticulture industry, but to do so requires a more substantial depth of knowledge and understanding of yeast and bacterial systems than what is currently known.
"Precision fermentation is an emerging technology that is difficult if not impossible to scale."
Manning explained that winemaking uses fermentation to make products at scale already. However, Winely was established after Manning set out to understand how winemakers went about this process and discovered many problems within the general understanding of yeast systems, which have remained unsolved, even in winemaking. Knowing that this needed to be solved was the reason behind Winely's inception.
The starting point of creating the technology to understand yeast systems better would begin in the winemaking world.
Read more from Winely below, starting on page 8.
