The future is fungi
Images courtesy of KÄÄPÄ
by Jade French
KÄÄPÄ Biotech is at the forefront of scientific research about fungi and their potential to improve the well-being of both humans and the planet. ALHAUS talked to CEO Eric Puro about the Finnish company’s commitment to science, sustainability and traceability.
Mushrooms are fast becoming one of the best sustainable solutions for many of the world’s wickedest issues. The fashion world has embraced vegan leather, companies are increasingly using mycelium instead of polystyrene packaging, and mushrooms have even been used to clean up oil spills. Medicinal mushrooms have also captured global attention—it is an industry poised to grow by US$4.55bn during 2021-2025. But can fast growth be sustainable? We spoke to Eric Puro, CEO of KÄÄPÄ Biotech, a company with a long-term vision for mushroom growth.
First of all, tell us a bit about KÄÄPÄ…
We have grown from a small outdoor mushroom farm to a 20,000-log cultivation centre and research and development laboratory, which looks for the best way to use mushrooms to improve the well-being of both humans and the planet. Our work falls under four main divisions: KÄÄPÄ Mushrooms, Nordic Mushrooms, KÄÄPÄ Biotech, and KÄÄPÄ Forest. We create medicinal mushroom products such as tinctures and powders, develop research with industry and governments, and support the cultivation of medicinal mushrooms in our local Finnish forests. We solve the same problems as regular technology companies. We just look to nature for our inspiration and our answers, and try to learn from those inherently regenerative systems that are, by their very nature, sustainable.
Mushrooms have become a big ‘trend’. How do you keep your business sustainable whilst still making sure you’re in conversation with people whose interest in the benefits of mushrooms is growing?
For us, sustainability means a long-term way of thinking. Most start-ups act in the present, they might not really think about what things will look like in 10+ years. When we did a risk analysis, we found the chaga is one of the top consumed mushrooms in the world, but that also means that it has been over-harvested. To mitigate this problem, we said, “Let’s cultivate it ourselves,” but that turned out to be a very difficult answer to the problem, because you can’t grow chaga indoors—it needs to grow on a living birch tree. And it takes 10 years to fully mature a chaga mushroom. This isn’t an immediate solution to a trend forecast.
So, we created our forestry division in order to grow our mushrooms in a sustainable way, working with local forest owners. We were the first in the world to do that at the scale we have. We have become almost a vertically integrated company because we just couldn’t see the ethics in the spaces as good as we wanted them to be. Our customers can see that we are holistically looking at the whole ecosystem and really making sure that it is not over-harvested.
KÄÄPA farm
What makes Finland such a good base for KÄÄPA?
We’re in a small village of 1500 people. We’re surrounded by forests and lakes and moose and deer. And there’s a reason for that. We want to have sensitivity when we think about problem-solving, we want to consider: what is the problem and how could that problem be solved in nature? Where does that problem exist in nature? How does the ecosystem already address the problem? And it just so happens that Finland has the cleanest air and cleanest water ever measured. So, when we’re growing and working with mushrooms we don’t need to worry about the contamination of any heavy metals or pesticides. That’s the best part of being in Finland—the fact that it is just such a perfect place to see nature thrive.
There seem to be two sides to the KÄÄPÄ audience: you have the biohackers, who feel quite technology-orientated, but you work with nature conservators as well. Do those two elements communicate well with one another or are they antithetical at times?
I would love to tell you that I feel that they’re just totally integrated, but I also believe that it’s also a bit antithetical. I go on a lot of biohacking podcasts, and they often want these clear-cut routes through our health and well-being. On the one hand, this can help us to really rethink our approach. For example, reishi is used as an adaptogenic mushroom, providing support to the immune system, and we saw that all the biohackers started using it for sleep support. If we follow the trends of how people take medicinal mushrooms, we can start to develop quality assurances with KÄÄPÄ Biotech to guarantee that the right compounds are in the product to support these ‘hacks’.
But, on the other hand, nature says, wait, that could be a little bit more complicated than what you think. So, to explore that, we also have a whole R&D mycological laboratory—the largest in the Nordics—and a whole science team devoted to researching with partners across Europe. We look into everything from the mushroom compounds to the health of our forests and the environment. Bringing those two things together can sometimes be a challenge. Obviously, there are real medicinal benefits to taking functional mushrooms, and they are really helping people with their health. But I think a part of the boom in this industry right now is just the sheer fascination with fungi.
Chaga mushroom
Lion’s mane mushroom
Mycological laboratory
Why do you think there is such a growing fascination with mushrooms?
I love magical things. To me, magic is just a word we use to describe things we don’t fully understand. You see the northern lights for the first time and, you know, the experience is a magical one. You can try to explain it, but it’s almost better not to. I think those mysteries of life are still pretty integral to our human experience. Mushrooms are one of the last frontiers where, even as a company, we’re still learning new things all the time. We might try to put different species in boxes and say, ‘Okay that’s a saprophytic wood decomposing mushroom,’ and then, all of a sudden, it becomes parasitic. Or we find that the decomposing mushrooms actually eat nematodes, so they’re omnivorous. As humans, we try to make the world around us clear-cut—and fungi just destroy all that.
How do you communicate the various brand messages of the company?
It can be a challenge, but, ultimately, we are an R&D platform for bringing fungal inventions to the market. That’s how we tell our story. So that leaves us (and me), thankfully, wide room to operate and then anything in that space is [potentially] where we’re interested. Our values are commitment to science, sustainability, and traceability. If our values are in alignment with the research project, and we have the capacity to do it, then we usually take it on.
Customers are a completely different audience [with whom] to talk about those kinds of things—they might be more interested in what the product can do for them. Their secondary concern might be looking at the sustainability of the company, and checking you’re not actively harming the planet. Then, a third concern might be: Am I improving the planet by buying this product? It is up to us to answer these questions before they are even asked.
What does the future hold for KÄÄPÄ?
KÄÄPÄ’s next project is to completely revolutionise how we grow food [in a way] that we can actually utilise targeted mycorrhizal—fungi to support the growth of plants—instead of, you know, fertilisers and chemicals. Overall, though, the future is fungi: it’s as simple as that.
Eric Puro, CEO, KÄÄPÄ Biotech
Eric Puro is an ex-corporate consultant turned biohacker, a father of three, and experienced entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of KÄÄPÄ Biotech, a biotechnology company at the forefront of scientific knowledge about fungi and their support for human health. In this role he has taken mushroom cultivation to the next level and developed new quality standards for the industry. Eric is a member of the executive committee of the International Medicinal Mushroom Society. BBC radio, NutraIngredients, Nutraceutical Business Review and Nutrition Insight have interviewed him, and he has visited numerous podcasts—Biohacker’s Live Show, Decoding Superhuman, Siim Land Podcast, The Permaculture Podcast and The M Word.