German NanoStruct Secures €2.6M Seed Funding To Speed Up Harmful Bacteria Detection In Food

The investment will support pilot projects in the food testing market, the expansion of its sales organisation, and the growth of its team.

The funding round was led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), Bayern Kapital, and AUXXO Female Catalyst Fund. The new investment follows earlier grant support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) and the European Union.

NanoStruct was founded in 2021 as a spinout from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg by Dr Henriette Maaß, Enno Schatz, and Kai Leibfried. The company is focused on improving food safety through the rapid, simple, and reliable detection of pathogenic bacteria.

Its core technology centres on nanostructured sensor chips designed to identify harmful pathogens in food within hours rather than days.

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According to the company, existing food testing methods can take several days to detect dangerous bacteria, limiting the ability to stop contaminated products from reaching consumers.

At the same time, increasingly stringent food safety regulations are driving demand among food manufacturers and testing laboratories for faster, automated analysis solutions.

NanoStruct says its technology combines optical measurement systems with nanotechnology, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence to significantly accelerate pathogen detection.

The platform can reportedly reduce the identification time for bacteria such as Listeriosis-causing Listeria and Salmonellosis from two to three days to only a few hours.

Beyond food safety testing, the company believes its technology could also help streamline applications in veterinary and human diagnostics, as well as bacterial monitoring in sensitive production environments.

Dr Henriette Maaß, CEO of NanoStruct, said, “With HTGF, Bayern Kapital, and AUXXO, we have found exactly the partners we need for this next step: experienced, well-networked, and convinced of our vision. Now we are bringing rapid bacterial analytics to the food industry.”