by Dr Stewart Washer

At the heart of all of Emyria’s drug development and discovery programs is a simple goal – to fill the unmet health needs of people around the world.

The global mental health crisis is only becoming a bigger issue as time goes on, and as governments and companies continue to struggle to meet it, biotech companies like Emyria are trying to step up to fill the gaps that currently exist. It’s work I’m proud to be a part of.

Sadly, the mental health crisis is not the only one we are currently confronted with. Climate change, global emissions and the journey to sustainability/net zero is another huge challenge for humanity to overcome.

It’s a challenge I think technological innovation is equally equipped to deal with, which is where Rumin8 comes in.

Rumin8 uses technology to reproduce solutions that already exist in nature to make affordable feed supplements that reduce methane emissions from livestock.

It started the way a lot of good ideas do – gathering a group of smart people together from different backgrounds – and we found that seaweed was actually effective in stopping cows from producing methane.

But growing enough seaweed to treat the world’s cows – that’s difficult. So we took the same approach we did at Emyria – let’s make it Ultra-Pure. By making it pharmaceutical, we could make as much as we want & scale it up accordingly.

Now, we are on a mission to decarbonise 100 million cattle by 2030, which would be 0.4% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and 40% of Australia’s total annual carbon emissions.

Our supplements can effectively and drastically reduce enteric methane production in livestock while improving animal performance.

We were recently thrilled to receive investment from both the Bill-Gates founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Andrew & Nicola Forrest’s agri-food business Harvest Road Group.

This funding, part of our Phase 2 seed funding round, will be used to accelerate Rumin8’s road to commercialisation.

These are investors that share our goal – to build profitable companies that also do good in the world, companies that fill a gap through innovation, technology, data and ingenuity.

It’s a philosophy shared by Emyria & Rumin8 – two companies looking to solve major challenges our world currently faces, and one I’m immensely proud to be a part of.