A pilot plant for biobased and circular materials.
A pilot plant is a small-scale production system that proves a manufacturing process at real conditions before full-scale capital is committed. For biobased and circular materials, the pilot stage is where most projects succeed or fail — because feedstock variability and equipment behaviour only reveal themselves at pilot scale. Ikigaia's Loonshot Factory is a precommercial pilot line with a full pulping-to-forming route and an in-house ISO/TAPPI lab — where your material is proven from bench to production scale, gate by gate.
The lab works. The plant doesn't. The pilot tells you why.
A lab result uses pure reagents and ideal conditions. A plant runs on real, variable feedstock at volume. The pilot is the only stage that closes that gap — and for biobased materials, it's where yield drops, energy costs double, and feedstock doesn't flow the way the model predicted.
Feedstock variability
Straw isn't wood. Bagasse isn't hemp. Each feedstock brings its own ash, silica, moisture, and seasonal variation — and each changes the process. A pilot run on your actual feedstock is the only way to know.
Equipment behaviour
A refiner at pilot scale doesn't behave like a lab beaker. Fibre length distribution, energy consumption, and throughput all shift. The pilot captures the data the plant will be designed from.
Investor evidence
Capital doesn't fund a lab result. It funds a pilot-proven process with a mass balance, a yield curve, and an energy number. The pilot is where the evidence that unlocks capital is produced.
Four gates from feedstock to scale-up plan.
You pay as you prove. You can stop after any gate. The first gate is priced to let a startup in.
Scoping & feedstock characterisation
Tell us the material and where it needs to get to. We run a lab-scale characterisation — fibre analysis, ash, silica, moisture — and come back with a scoping note and a realistic plan.
Under NDA · no commitmentBench-scale pulping trial
A small pulping run in the lab to confirm the feedstock responds to the process route. Yield, fibre quality, and energy consumption at bench scale — the first real evidence.
Start at a startup's budgetPilot-line run
A full run on the Lemi line — pulping, refining, forming, drying — at pilot scale. Real feedstock, real equipment, real mass balance. The data your investors and your engineers need.
Production-representativeProcess package & scale-up plan
The pilot data turned into a process package: mass and energy balance, equipment sizing, CAPEX/OPEX. This is the document that turns a pilot into a plant decision — and Regeneering carries it to the build.
Hand-off to EPCMOur own line. Our own lab. Not a borrowed facility.
The Lemi pilot line is a real industrial site — not a university lab we rent time on. That means the data it produces is production-representative.
Precommercial pilot line
A full pulping-to-forming line on a once-idled industrial site brought back to life — not a borrowed university lab, our own equipment.
In-house materials lab
Fibre analysis, strength testing, barrier performance, and recyclability assessment — to recognised standards, in-house.
Material-development projects
Agrofibre pulp, textile-to-textile recycled fibre, moulded fibre, dissolving pulp, medical sterile packaging — proven on the line.
Feedstock families
Agrofibres (straw, hemp, bagasse, agave), textile waste, recovered fibre, and woody biomass — each with its own process route.
The vocabulary of proving.
Terms the industry uses for pilot-stage work. Each describes something we do on the Lemi line.
What a pilot plant proves — and what it costs.
The role, the gates, and the economics of pilot-stage validation.
What is a pilot plant?
A pilot plant is a small-scale production system that replicates a manufacturing process at a fraction of commercial capacity. Its purpose is to prove the process works at scale — not in a lab flask, but on real equipment with real feedstock — before the capital for a full plant is committed. For biobased and circular materials, the pilot stage is where most projects succeed or fail, because feedstock variability and equipment behaviour only reveal themselves at pilot scale.
How does a pilot plant differ from a lab?
A lab proves the chemistry. A pilot plant proves the process — the mass balance, the energy integration, the equipment sizing, the control logic, and the feedstock handling. Lab work can use pure reagents and ideal conditions; a pilot plant runs on the real, variable feedstock your commercial plant will use. The gap between lab and pilot is where most biobased material ventures discover that their yield drops, their energy cost doubles, or their feedstock doesn't flow.
How much does a pilot trial cost?
It depends on the material, the process route, and the gates required. Ikigaia works gate by gate — you pay as you prove, and you can stop after any gate. A first scoping engagement is priced to let a startup in. The point is that a pilot trial costs a fraction of what a wrong plant decision costs — and the evidence it produces is what unlocks capital.
What is pilot plant design?
Pilot plant design is the engineering of a small-scale process system that is representative enough to predict commercial-scale behaviour. It requires choosing the right unit operations, sizing them for pilot throughput, and instrumenting them to capture the data that will drive the scale-up decision. Good pilot design means the results translate; poor pilot design means you prove the wrong thing.
What is process scale-up?
Process scale-up is the transition from a proven pilot process to a commercial-scale plant. It involves scaling equipment, adjusting operating parameters, and accounting for effects that emerge at scale — heat transfer limitations, mixing inefficiencies, feedstock variability at volume. Ikigaia's advantage is that the same group that runs the pilot engineers the scale-up, so the scale-up knowledge doesn't walk out the door between stages.
Can you run trials on my specific feedstock?
Yes. The Lemi pilot line handles agrofibres (straw, hemp, bagasse, agave), textile waste, recovered fibre, and woody biomass. If your feedstock is novel, the first step is a small-scale pulping and characterisation trial in our lab — that tells us whether a full pilot run is worth your budget before you commit to it.
Have a material that works in the lab? Prove it on our line.
The first step is a scoping note — tell us the material and where it needs to get to.