PORTEFEUILLE

From mushroom waste to living soil: scaling a Swiss biostimulant for resilient harvests.
Every summer, Swiss farmers, landscapers and municipalities see the same picture: cracked soil, wilting plants and rising irrigation costs while yields stagnate. The cause is rarely a lack of fertiliser. It is a lack of life. Decades of intensive use have depleted the microorganisms that build soil structure, store water and feed plants, and mineral fertiliser cannot bring them back. At the same time, around 3,000 tonnes of spent mushroom substrate, a material rich in fungal mycelium and organic matter, is disposed of in Switzerland every year.
Symactiv turns this waste stream into the solution. Our pellet combines spent mushroom substrate with a consortium of beneficial microorganisms brewed in-house. Spread with a standard fertiliser spreader, it brings back the workforce the soil is missing: fungi and bacteria that unlock nutrients, hold water and stabilise soil aggregates. Farmers keep their equipment and their practices; only the soil changes.
During the VALIDATE phase (GRS-021/24), the team ran 35 field trials across Switzerland in 2025 and 20 additional large-scale trials in 2026. On average, treated plots yielded around 15% more, with better water retention and higher resilience under heat and drought, and not a single trial showed a negative effect on yield. A controlled pot trial indicated that half of the mineral fertiliser can be replaced.
In the EXECUTE phase, Symactiv moves from proof to scale. Drying and pelletising are outsourced to two Swiss partners, so the company can reach an output of 500 tonnes per year without owning heavy machinery. Sales concentrate on three segments where the pain is most acute: vegetable farmers, professional landscapers and municipalities. Each receives a proof-based offer in which the customer measures the result on their own land. Independent validation with research partners continues in parallel.
The target by mid-2027: 500 tonnes of pellets produced, CHF 500,000 in revenue, a fully circular Swiss value chain, and 500 to 1,000 hectares of degraded soil brought back to life.

Symactiv SA (Neuchâtel) is the operating company that emerged from the ZHAW project. In the first six months of commercial sales, the team won 45 professional customers and generated close to CHF 50,000 in revenue. The first large order came from Jucker Farm, placed after the farm had seen the results on its own fields. Reference cases from the trials include potatoes at Jucker Farm (36.2 to 40.1 t/ha), onions on depleted sandy-clay soil (around +15% yield, aggregate stability almost doubled) and soybeans (+33% yield through more nitrogen-fixing bacteria). Vineyard trials in Ticino showed vigorous, greener vines without drought stress during the hot summer of 2026.
The production model has been rebuilt for scale. The pilot line in Kerns (around 20 tonnes produced) is replaced by outsourced drying and pelletising at partners in Oberaach (TG) and Orbe (VD), with a combined capacity far beyond project needs. Symactiv keeps the microbiology, quality control and logistics in-house. The formula has been simplified to two components: spent mushroom substrate and the microbial consortium.

Production: Integrate the microbial application into the partner’s pelletising line, run the first industrial batches, set up big-bag storage and secure additional substrate suppliers among Swiss mushroom growers alongside Kernser Edelpilze.

Market adoption: Launch the season 2026/2027 cohort offers in all three segments and in three languages (French, German, Italian): the Living Soil Package for vegetable farmers, the Resilient Gardens cohort for landscapers and the Heat-Stop Canopy cohort for municipalities. A three-year urban tree monitoring programme starts in October 2026. A first retail test with garden centres is under preparation.

Validation: Collect and publish the 2026 harvest data, continue third-party plant stress measurements with Vivent biosignal sensors and ZHAW, and run a nutrient density study on treated vegetables within the Soil to Fork consortium (UniFR, FiBL, BioVaud, Prométerre and commercial partners).
Partnerships. Jucker Farm acts as field lab for the translation of research into a practical solution. Further partnerships: ZHAW, FiBL, Kernser Edelpilze, the two pelletising partners and Vivent. The listing of the product as an input for organic farming is in progress.

Financial leverage: The VALIDATE phase secured BRIDGE funding for the trial programme, and a BCN prize financed the first production line. Further applications for cantonal economic promotion and impact funding (Clima Now Spotlight 2026) are under way.