Israel’s Ever After Foods has partnered with Swiss manufacturing giant Bühler Group to produce cultivated meat at a mass scale with much smaller equipment.
Extending its sustainable protein push, Bühler Group has teamed up with an Israeli food tech firm to help streamline cultivated meat production.
Ever After Foods – a joint venture between cellular agriculture firm Pluri and the Tnuva Group (Israel’s largest food company) – will work with Bühler to bring to market a commercial-scale system that can produce cultivated meat using equipment at least 10 times smaller than the industry standard.
“We are overcoming the bioreactor sizing conundrum,” Eyal Rosenthal, CEO of Ever After Foods, told Green Queen. “Where others need an absolutely enormous 20,000-litre bioreactor, our system produces the same volume with less than 2,000 litres, making it more efficient and viable.”
He added that Bühler will “play a critical role in our mission to create the next, more sustainable, era of meat production”.
Shifting away from the pharma world
Formerly named Plurinuva, Ever After Foods has exclusive licencing rights to use Pluri’s technology and intellectual property to commercialise cultivated meat.
Its proprietary edible packed-bed (EPB) technology platform – which comprises a patented 3D cell expansion environment to mimic the cells’ natural environment – dramatically lowers production costs. And its bioreactors yield up to six times more protein and 700 times more lipids from each cell, offering better flavour and nutritional value.
“Consumers will not compromise on taste and texture. Our production system is specifically designed for cultivated meat production, which is a complete step-change from traditional cultivated meat technologies. Another element that sets us apart is that our system does not compromise on the final product, delivering real meat rather than cell slurry, while achieving outstanding efficiency,” explained Rosenthal.
Scalability is another key market barrier. According to consultancy giant McKinsey, to meet the industry’s growth demands, cultivated meat firms would need up to 22 times more fermentation capacity than currently exists in the global pharmaceutical sector.
“Where traditional stirred-tank systems require 4,000 litres to produce 80kg of cultivated meat, our system uses only 200 litres without costly retention devices such as attenuated tangential flow or tangential flow filtration,” said Rosenthal. “This results in at least a 90% reduction in production costs and significantly lower capex, enabling cost parity with conventional meat.”
The process is also much more climate-friendly than industrially raising livestock, resulting in 93% less air pollution, 95% less land use, and 94% less water consumption.
Ever After Foods: working on several cell lines
Ever After Foods says it’s working closely with cultivated meat makers and food industry leaders to speed up the development and global deployment of its EPB system – the partnership with Bühler is an extension of that effort.
“Their support will help us scale up and ensure cultivated meat producers around the globe can access scalable, affordable food production systems. Having a respected player like Bühler supporting us is crucial for ensuring that our technology meets the highest standards in the food industry,” said Rosenthal.
The company – which raised $10M in June – is one of several innovators pushing Israel’s food tech economy forward. The country was the third to approve the sale of cultivated meat, greenlighting local startup Aleph Farms‘s application in December 2023.
Israel has additionally made food tech one of its top five priority R&D areas and attracted 10% of all VC funding ($1.2B) in the alternative protein sector between 2014 and 2023.
“We are working with several leading cultivated meat and global food and meat companies across species like beef, chicken, duck, and fish,” said Rosenthal.
Bühler advances future food focus as profits grow
“Powering cultivated meat production at scale with a patented production system, Ever After Foods will help the food industry keep pace with the protein demands of a growing global population,” said Bühler CTO Ian Roberts.
The collaboration is part of Bühler’s goal of enabling market-ready, healthy cell-based products that are friendly to the wallet and the planet and can address global challenges like food insecurity. It comes days after the company reported a turnover of $3.3B for 2024, making a net profit of $209M (a 5.5% increase from the previous year).
“The global food chain faces significant challenges if we are to successfully and sustainably feed our growing population. How we produce and consume protein will continue to change, and requires a transition of our protein system to deliver this,” said Roberts.
In December, it opened The Cultured Hub, a cellular agriculture scale-up plant, in partnership with Swiss retail giant Migros and flavour specialist Givaudan. Situated in The Valley in Kemptthal, the factory can support the development of products like cultivated meat, fermentation-derived dairy, cell-based chocolate, and more.
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