A Woodland agriculture technology startup incubator has doubled the size of its lab space, after operating at maximum occupancy for nearly two years.
On Thursday the Lab@AgStart announced the opening of its new 8,000-square-foot expansion, the Bayer Lifehub California@AgStart.
The new wing adds 26 new laboratory benches, a fermentation and tissue culture lab, an event space and more coworking and office space to the incubator’s lab and office complex, which opened at 1100 Main St. in downtown Woodland in 2021 to overwhelming demand.
“About five months into opening we reached 100% capacity and it’s been there since then,” said AgStart Program Director Amanda Portier.
Portier didn’t have an updated figure for how much the expansion cost, but as of last summer it was estimated at $1 million.
Portier said that around half of the new space is already leased, some by current AgStart startups that want to expand. Those include biotech company TurtleTree, which will use the new fermentation lab to develop its debut product offering, a lab-grown protein naturally found in human milk.
"TurtleTree is looking forward to the Lab@AgStart’s expanded laboratory facility and is particularly excited about the new fermentation space,” TurtleTree Chief Scientific Officer Aletta Schnitzler said, in a news release. “With more laboratory capacity, we are able to hire additional staff and accelerate the commercialization of our innovations."
The startup, which is based in Singapore, has been expanding in the Sacramento region ever since it moved into the Lab@AgStart — in 2021 it closed a $30 million funding round and announced plans to build out a research and development facility in West Sacramento.
In total, the 10 startups at the Lab@AgStart have created 24 full-time jobs and 26 internships, and attracted $46 million in private capital investment.
The expansion brings the Lab@AgStart to a total of 13,000 square feet and 52 lab benches.
