PalmPro - Cohort I Founder Spotlight

Who is Ruth?

Ruth Ogbevire is a Biochemistry graduate from the University of Manchester, a RISE Global Winner — a programme backed by Eric Schmidt and the Rhodes Trust — a One Young World Ambassador, and a scientist who has worked at AstraZeneca, the University of Nottingham's Biodiscovery Institute, and presented at climate tech summits in San Francisco.

Ruth doesn't just understand the problem she's solving — she has spent her entire academic and professional career building the expertise to solve it. She is joined by co-founder Natalie Mbonjani, a Pharmacy student at the University of Reading and fellow RISE Fellow, who led PalmPro's application into the accelerator and played a key role in getting the team to pitch day.

Why is Ruth building it?

Global vegetable oil production hit 200 million tonnes in 2024 — and it is still not enough. Extraction rates are low, falling, and wasteful. Palm oil mills produce three tonnes of wastewater for every tonne of oil extracted. Expanding farmland to meet demand accelerates deforestation, destroys biodiversity, and drives food inflation. 294 million people face food insecurity, and vegetable oil prices rose 33% in 2024 alone.

What did Ruth build?

PalmPro is a biotech company developing AI-designed enzymes that enable vegetable oil processors to extract significantly more oil from existing crops — without expanding farmland. More yield, less waste, less environmental damage, better food security. The technology sits at the intersection of protein engineering, industrial biotechnology, and climate impact.

This is not an early idea. PalmPro has already been awarded a €100,000 grant from The Materials Lab Incubator — making them the only UK team to receive it — and a €10,000 Founderland Forward grant. They were a top 20 finalist at the Imagine Next Summit in San Francisco, pitching to climate tech investors and corporate venture partners.

Where is Ruth taking it?

At Revolut HQ on 27th May, Ruth delivered a clear, compelling pitch that the panel immediately understood. The market is enormous. The science is real. The team has the credentials to execute.

Ruth is now based at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, accelerating R&D with the Materials Lab grant. The work is well underway — and the scale of what PalmPro could become is significant.

If the technology lands the way the science suggests it can, this is a company that will make a lot of money while fixing one of the most pressing environmental and food security challenges on the planet.