There is a good chance titanium dioxide is in your food right now. It is in frosting, chewing gum, salad dressing, coffee creamer, sauces, and hundreds of other everyday products. It makes food look brighter and whiter. It is also a synthetic, petroleum-derived compound that the European Union banned from food in 2022 over concerns about its potential to damage DNA.
The US has not banned it yet. But the pressure is building, and food manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic are quietly desperate for a replacement that actually works at scale.
Two companies just announced they have one.
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- Swiss biotech Seprify raises $15.7M Series A to scale its cellulose-based white ingredient.
- Seprify partners with Oterra, a leading natural colour supplier, to bring the product to food and beverage brands globally.
- Their product SilvaAlba matches TiO2’s whitening performance and has been tested across 15+ food categories.
- It is made from FSC-certified wood pulp and produces an estimated 80% less CO2 than titanium dioxide.
The Titanium Dioxide Problem Is Real
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has been the food industry’s go-to whitening agent for decades. It turns up in frosting, confectionery coatings, plant-based dairy, powdered beverages, and more.
Consumers rarely know it is there, but they would notice if it were gone: without it, many white and pastel-colored foods would look dull, gray, or unappetizing.
The EU banned it as a food additive (E171) in 2022, citing unresolved concerns about genotoxicity. The US FDA still permits it, but clean label pressure, tightening global regulations, and growing consumer awareness have put brands in an uncomfortable position. They need a natural, scalable alternative that delivers the same visual performance. Until now, nothing has reliably cleared that bar.
Enter SilvaAlba: White, From a Tree
Seprify is a Swiss biotech spun out of the University of Cambridge and the University of Fribourg. Their breakthrough is SilvaAlba, a food-grade whitening ingredient made from microcrystalline cellulose sourced from FSC-certified virgin wood pulp. The technology works by engineering cellulose particles that scatter light in a specific way, producing the bright, opaque white that food formulators need, without any synthetic chemistry involved.
The result is an ingredient that is bio-based, biodegradable, nano-compliant, and food-safe, with a neutral flavor and odor. It disperses easily, holds up under heat, light, and varying pH levels, and requires lower dosages than many competing alternatives. Seprify estimates it produces 80% lower CO2 emissions than conventional titanium dioxide.
Oterra Brings It to Market
Making a great ingredient is one thing. Getting it onto shelves at global scale is another. That is where Oterra comes in.
Oterra is one of the world’s leading suppliers of natural colours and colour solutions for the food and beverage industry, with deep market reach and application expertise across categories. In November 2025, Seprify and Oterra announced a strategic commercial partnership to jointly market SilvaAlba as a natural, plant-based alternative to titanium dioxide.
The two companies have been collaborating for more than two years, running trials across more than 15 food categories, including bakery icings, confectionery coatings, sauces, plant-based dairy and meat, and powdered beverages. Oterra’s US market presence and regulatory know-how significantly strengthen the path to adoption in North America, where TiO2 remains permitted but under growing scrutiny.
The Funding and What It Pays For
To support the commercial rollout, Seprify has closed a 13.4 million euro (~$15.7M) Series A round. Investors include Inter IKEA Group, Una Terra Early Growth Fund, Zuercher Kantonalbank, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, and Kickfund.
The IKEA investment is notable. IKEA is not a food company, but it is one of the world’s largest industrial users of coatings, surface finishes, and sustainable materials. Their involvement signals that Seprify’s cellulose platform has potential far beyond food, extending into furniture coatings, printed electronics, and packaging.
The capital will be used to scale production to hundreds of tonnes per year, support commercial rollout across food, pet food, cosmetics, and coatings, and advance engineering for future industrial capacity. The technology has already been validated at Technology Readiness Levels 7 through 9, with more than 100 customer organizations currently engaged in evaluations and early commercial supply discussions.
“Our immediate priority is delivering consistent quality and reliable supply, meeting the operational standards large industrial customers require,” said Lukas Schertel, co-founder and CEO of Seprify.
Why It Matters
The race to replace titanium dioxide has been running for years, with many contenders and no clear winner. SilvaAlba, backed by the Seprify-Oterra partnership and now fully funded for scale, looks like the most credible answer yet. It is plant-based, performance-tested across real product categories, commercially partnered with a company that already has the industry relationships, and backed by enough capital to hit the volumes that major food brands require.
For brands still carrying TiO2 on their ingredient labels, the clean-label off-ramp just got a lot more realistic.
Sources: Green Queen; Seprify press release; Oterra/Seprify partnership announcement.