1 Million Manhours
Otto Simon • October 26, 2021
Otto Simon celebrates passing over 1 million manhours without a RIDDOR reportable accident!
Congratulations to our site teams for all their hard work.
Health & Safety is core value for Otto Simon. We prioritise health and safety in the workplace and never compromise on the safety of our workforce or the public. We believe that Health & Safety at work is a fundamental right.
Our continual improvement plan for HSEQ ensures that all projects are delivered to the highest HSEQ standard. For the past four years, OSL has been awarded the RoSPA Gold Award for our outstanding achievements in Health and Safety.

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This year we celebrated our year of successes and lessons learnt at the Stanneylands, Wilmslow. Topics included how we have streamlined our, reducing business overheads and making our collaboration more efficient. Specific attention was paid to the successes of the projects we have delivered over the last year and the consolidation of the team into our new headquarters. Ferrostatics proudly shared their highest year of revenue and strong performance, with a promising year to follow. We have also reviewed key team changes, including the expansion of the engineering team and restructuring of our Sales team. We look ahead to 2026 with confidence, fresh focus and further passion to deliver leading engineering expertise and customer service!

Aerbio and Otto Simon have been jointly shortlisted as finalists for the IChemE Global Awards 2025 in the Biopharma category. Our entry, Clean Protein: Engineered for a Resource-Constrained World, showcases the research and engineering efforts being the development of Proton™, a protein-rich single-cell biomass produced using a novel aerobic gas-fermentation process, utilising hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide as feed gases. This project has demonstrated the feasibility of producing a sustainable, high-quality protein ingredient at pilot scale, with applications in aquaculture and animal nutrition today, and the potential to expand to food-grade applications in the future. The technical challenges of this work have been considerable. Designing and operating a continuous fermentation system with hydrogen and oxygen in flammable ranges required rigorous safety engineering: hazard studies, CFD modelling, ATEX compliance, and functional safety analysis were all critical. With no commercial-scale precedents to draw upon, designs were developed from first principles and validated through lab-scale experimentation and pilot-plant data. Despite the added complexity of international collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project successfully delivered a first-of-a-kind pilot facility, generating essential data to enable scale-up to demonstration and commercial scale. The outcome speak for itself: Proton™ contains over 70% protein with a complete amino acid profile, delivers strong results in digestibility and extrusion trials, and has already shown positive performance in aquaculture and poultry feed applications. It can be produced with a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions and water use of conventional proteins, while requiring no arable land and supporting biodiversity by reducing reliance on fishmeal and soy. This nomination recognises the strength of our cross-disciplinary partnership, combining microbial fermentation expertise with advanced process design, safety engineering, and scale-up know-how. Together, we are laying the foundations for a scalable, climate-positive protein platform that can contribute to global food security while reducing environmental impact. We look forward to the awards ceremony later this year and to continuing our journey towards commercial deployment of this disruptive technology. Learn more about the project: - Aerbio website
