With $100M Investment, EverGrain Commercializing Upcycled Barley Protein

With a $100 million investment from Anheuser-Busch InBev, a startup called EverGrain is scaling up production of upcycled barley protein. The company is beginning large-scale production of EverPro - its Upcycled Certified barley protein – at its 130,000-square-foot production facility located on AB InBev’s St. Louis campus.

Using a proprietary process, EverGrain transforms the leftover barley used in the brewing process into nutritious and sustainable protein ingredients for a variety of food and beverage products. The company estimates that the brewing industry creates 9 million tons of spent grain per year - representing a source for 3 million tons of protein. Once EverGrain separates the protein from the fiber of the grain, what is left is a high protein isolate that is 90 percent soluble and acts much like whey or dairy protein.

The location of EverGrain’s production facility, which is a refurbished building from 1905 that has been idled for the past three decades, gives the company direct and immediate access to thousands of tons of spent grain from AB InBev’s production processes. (AB InBev produces 1.4 million metric tons of spent grain per year.)

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