Yeast extract was the main carbon source during growth, while still contributing 8 % overall carbon to riboflavin. Overall carbon flux from rapeseed oil into riboflavin equaled 80 %. Transmembrane formate flux simulations revealed that the C1-supply displayed a severe bottleneck during the initial riboflavin production, which was overcome in later phases of the cultivation by intrinsic formate accumulation. The transiently limiting C1-pool was successfully replenished by time-resolved feeding of formate or serine. This increased the intracellular precursor availability and resulted in a riboflavin titer increase of 45 %. This study is the first that successfully sheds light on carbon fluxes during the growth and riboflavin production phase by use of 13C tracers and a complementary platform of analytical techniques.