Scientific Technical Assistance

Bioindustrial Services

The AURI Bioindustrial Team works with entrepreneurs, farmers, cooperatives, and businesses to transform ideas into commercially viable products and sustainable businesses.  

AURI’s technical support services are aimed at early- to mid-stage agricultural innovators who lack large, dedicated internal R&D infrastructure or specialized technical expertise and are exploring new value-added uses for agricultural products. Technical staff support value-added agricultural businesses with activities such as:

• Food product and process development, including formulation, bench-scale testing, nutritional label development, shelf-life assessment, advisory services on regulatory compliance and food safety, and packaging considerations
• Materials and product characterization and testing
• A full suite of analytical services
• Guidance on scale-up, equipment selection, feasibility assessment, techno-economic analysis, gap analysis, and connections to relevant technical, industry, and academic resource networks

AURI’s technical work is supported by specialized laboratories located at its Marshall and Waseca facilities.  

• The Waseca facility, known as the Bioindustrial Innovation Center, also features a client innovation bay, where client-specific piloting and processing activities can be conducted, complementing AURI’s equipment with client-owned or rented equipment. 
• The Marshall facility features an analytical chemistry laboratory and a preparatory and synthetic chemistry laboratory. 

Technical activities carried out by AURI include:

• A full suite of anaerobic digestion testing and services, from feedstock characterization and biomethane potential assessment to pilot processing at the thousands-of-gallons scale
• Fermentation assessment and testing
• Biomass drying, milling, blending, separation, and densification
• Decortication for fiber separation and preparation
• Chemical characterization of feedstocks and products by a variety of analytical methods
• Assessment of feed properties and characteristics of coproducts and other residues

• Analytical and preparatory chemistry labs (hyperlink)

• Applied biology lab (hyperlink)
• Biomass processing lab (hyperlink)

• FDA-inspected grains and oilseeds processing lab (hyperlink)

In addition, AURI’s staff works closely with clients and partners to design tailored technical support and development pathways that integrate AURI’s resources with external capabilities, ensuring that evolving client needs are effectively addressed.