Building a modern factory to produce mushrooms in Lousã is the goal of GoldenCap, a project that was born from the participation of Cerdeira – Home for Creativity in the LIFE MycoRestore project. Paulo Antunes, leader of the new business project, is currently visiting China to see the best examples of that world leader in mushroom production and to choose the equipment that will be purchased for the factory in Portugal.

GoldenCap’s method of producing saprophytic fungi is based on a fungal propagation technique using liquid cultures. This method is not only cheaper but also easily scalable. This propagation technique is 73% cheaper than the conventional one.

This cultivation technology is also innovative in Europe due to the use of reusable bottles that eliminate costs associated with disposable plastics and reduce labor needs during the substrate production and harvesting phase.

This production technique in a controlled environment allows for more yearly production cycles, with constant quantity and replicable quality.

The artificial substrates that GoldenCap has formulated allow the cultivation of more than 14 species of saprophytic and exotic mushrooms using forest and agricultural residues that are abundant in Portugal. The factory will have a production capacity of 250 tons of mushrooms annually.