Austrian company Kern Tec, founded in 2019, brings a circular touch to the EIC Scaling Club’s Agri & Food tech market group by turning overlooked agricultural side streams into sustainable raw materials, transforming apricot, cherry and plum kernels into high-value ingredients for food and cosmetic applications.
We spoke with co-founder Luca Fichtinger to learn how Kern Tec began, how the company built the technology and supply chains needed to scale, and what it has taken to turn overlooked fruit seeds into sustainable ingredients for the food system of the future.
From an apricot orchard to a new raw material
Kern Tec’s story began in Lower Austria, in the Wachau region near Vienna. The area is known for apricots, and for products such as jam, juice and liqueurs. During a visit to a local farmer, Luca and his co-founders saw a problem hiding in plain sight. The farmer had large volumes of apricot pits left over from production and few useful ways to dispose of them. Yet he also knew something important: inside the pit was a kernel with qualities similar to a small almond.
That moment became the foundation of Kern Tec. What first looked like one farmer’s side stream soon became a wider European opportunity. As the team spoke with processors across the continent, they found that fruit seeds were being wasted in many places, with little value being captured.
What began as a focused idea also grew quickly in scale:
‘This whole project turned out to be much bigger than we anticipated,’ Luca says, referring to the investors, grant agencies and financing opportunities that helped the young company grow.
Solving the technical challenge
The potential was clear, but turning fruit kernels into safe, high-quality ingredients was not straightforward.
From a nutritional perspective, the kernels had many of the qualities of nuts. The challenge was that some stone fruit kernels contain cyanide-related compounds, which meant Kern Tec had to solve a major food safety question before these raw materials could be used at scale.
The team began by reviewing scientific literature, speaking with universities and analysing raw materials. The goal was to understand how to process the kernels safely while keeping their taste, texture and nutritional value.
‘It was exciting how many different applications there were, but it was also important to ensure that they tasted nice at the end of the day,’ Luca says.
The company also had to solve the engineering challenge of cracking the pits and separating the valuable parts of the raw material. What first seemed like the simpler task became part of a broader technical system combining biochemical processes, engineering, quality control and product development.
Today, Kern Tec uses protected equipment and specialised processes to make this work at industrial scale.
Building a new value chain, not just a new product
Kern Tec’s team brings together engineers, scientists, product developers and operations specialists. One side of the company focuses on development and innovation. The other ensures that raw materials can be sourced, processed and delivered at the right quality and at the right time.
That mix is essential because Kern Tec is not simply making a new ingredient but rather building a new value chain. The company sources side streams from fruit processing and turns them into ingredients for sectors such as plant-based dairy alternatives, confectionery, oils and cosmetics.
‘Success in product development means turning more seeds into sustainable food ingredients. There is a real connection between work and impact,’ he says.
Scaling through complexity
As Kern Tec grew, the company faced a challenge common to many circular economy businesses: raw materials are not always uniform. Different batches of seeds can vary in taste, quality and cyanide levels. This made incoming quality control one of the company’s most important tasks.
To address this, Kern Tec built a database of different varieties, origins and raw material profiles. The company also strengthened quality checks before materials arrive at the factory. Once inside the facility, technologies help separate raw materials into different fractions, allowing the team to identify the best use for each batch.
‘Sometimes technology helps to automate these processes, but understanding how the raw material actually looks and how to turn it into real products was not just one aha moment, but many, many moments one after another,’ Luca explains.
Joining the EIC Scaling Club
For Kern Tec, becoming a member of the EIC Scaling Club was an opportunity to connect with other ambitious European deep tech companies, investors and experts.
‘It was a great chance to get in touch with such companies and also get some more exposure to potential investors and experts in the field,’ Luca says.
As Kern Tec continues to scale, its mission remains focused: turning overlooked fruit seeds into useful, sustainable ingredients. By creating value from raw materials already grown and processed in Europe, the company is also showing how circular food innovation can help reduce waste, strengthen supply chains and support a more resilient food system.
About the EIC Scaling Club
The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.
The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.
The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.
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