• Continuous fermentation remains underutilized in food biomanufacturing. • Key barriers span microbial, engineering, economic, and regulatory domains. • Process intensification enables stable long-term continuous operation. • Commercial success is currently concentrated in microbial protein production. • Lessons from pharma can accelerate food-sector adoption. Continuous fermentation can improve productivity, resource efficiency, and product consistency in food biomanufacturing, yet its industrial adoption remains limited compared with pharmaceutical manufacturing. This review analyzes the current state of continuous submerged fermentation for food ingredients, focusing on the biological, engineering, and regulatory challenges that constrain implementation. Key barriers include microbial and genetic stability during long-term operation, limitations in process monitoring and control, product inhibition, substrate variability, and regulatory uncertainty, particularly in the European context. Recent advances in process intensification, cell retention, perfusion, and integrated product recovery demonstrate increasing technical feasibility. To date, commercial-scale success is largely confined to microbial protein production, while most other food ingredients remain batch-based. Drawing on pharmaceutical experience, this review outlines priorities to accelerate translation toward sustainable continuous food bioprocessing.
Reyes-Insa et al. (Wed,) studied this question.