MOA Foodtech Targets Egg Volatility With a New Fermented Ingredient for Industrial Bakers

Moa FoodTech

Eggs have become the latest pressure point in the global food system, and the strain is showing in the sectors that depend on them most. Industrial bakeries, pastry manufacturers, and pasta producers have spent the past two years navigating rising input costs, repeated supply disruptions, and tightening allergen protocols. Against this backdrop, Spain-based MOA Foodtech is stepping into the gap with a new fermented ingredient intended to bring stability to one of the industry’s most unpredictable raw materials.

This week, the company unveiled MOA Q5, a powdered ingredient developed through the controlled fermentation of food-grade by-products. The concept is straightforward: replicate the functionality of egg, its ability to emulsify, foam, and coagulate, without relying on an ingredient whose price and availability now swing with every disease outbreak or supply-chain shock. MOA will debut Q5 at Food Ingredients Europe 2025, where it hopes to demonstrate how fermentation can help producers maintain performance without inheriting egg-market volatility.

The timing reflects a market that has struggled to regain its footing. In the United States, the ongoing Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza outbreak has forced the culling of millions of hens, pushing wholesale egg prices beyond $8 per dozen in early 2025 and keeping retail averages close to $6. Europe has faced its own instability. The European Commission’s most recent data places average EU egg prices nearly 50 percent above the 2020–24 baseline, with steady inflation persisting through 2025. For bakeries and pasta manufacturers, the result has been a mix of cost unpredictability, production planning challenges, and a heightened burden around allergen management.

MOA Q5 enters this landscape as a functional ingredient rather than a one-to-one egg replica. It is designed to provide the structure, lift, and elasticity manufacturers expect in cakes, muffins, brioches, pancakes, laminated doughs, and gluten-containing pasta, while allowing producers to reduce or replace egg inputs depending on their formulation. Because it is fermentation-derived and shelf-stable, it avoids the transport, storage, and safety constraints that come with liquid egg or egg powder. In a category where minor shifts in ingredient consistency can disrupt entire product lines, MOA is emphasizing predictability as much as performance.

The technology behind Q5 builds on MOA’s ALBATROS platform, an AI-directed fermentation system the company introduced earlier this year. ALBATROS is designed to convert side streams into consistent, high-functionality ingredients, using AI to steer fermentation conditions for reliable outcomes at scale. While the platform can produce multiple ingredient types, Q5 is its most commercially targeted release to date and a test of how well the system can deliver the batch stability industrial users expect.

For MOA, the launch is also a statement about where ingredient innovation is heading. The company argues that fermentation, especially when paired with AI, can offer a buffer against commodity volatility in a way traditional agricultural supply chains cannot. Eggs illustrate the point. The global layer-hen system is vulnerable to disease, weather, and feed-price fluctuations, and even short-term disruptions can take months to unwind because flock recovery is slow. By contrast, a fermentation-derived ingredient can be produced continuously, from stable inputs, with fewer supply-chain dependencies.

The shift is already underway across the industry, with manufacturers accelerating reformulation efforts to reduce allergen exposure and simplify labels. Q5 aligns closely with this trend. Because it can lower or eliminate egg and eggshell declarations, it allows producers to streamline allergen protocols and position products for cleaner-label claims without sacrificing texture or structure. For R&D teams that have struggled with the performance gap between traditional and alternative egg ingredients, Q5 is being framed as a tool that avoids the usual compromise.

Speaking ahead of the launch, MOA Foodtech CEO Bosco Emparanza said the ingredient is the product of years of work on fermentation-based functional materials. He described Q5 as “a modern ingredient for a supply chain that can no longer afford its own fragility,” emphasizing that manufacturers increasingly want reliability built into their formulations, not added later through buffers and risk planning.

Food Ingredients Europe will serve as the first real test of the industry’s appetite. If Q5 performs as promised, it arrives at a moment when bakeries and pasta manufacturers are actively seeking alternatives that stabilize both cost and production. If it doesn’t, the market will continue searching. Either way, the launch highlights a truth the sector can no longer ignore: eggs, once considered a reliable commodity, now represent a significant structural risk. Fermentation-based solutions like Q5 are stepping forward not as novelties but as potential relief valves for an industry in flux.