In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Pamela Anderson’s new vegan cookbook, OMNI’s call for cat taste-testers for cultivated meat, and a new dining club.
New products and launches
UK plant-based meat brand THIS has launched a vegan chicken shawarma SKU made from soy and fava beans. Currently available at Asda, it will retail at £3.30 for a 170g pack, and will appear on Waitrose and Co-op shelves next month.
Courtesy: THIS
Flora is introducing its previously foodservice-only Plant Cream to supermarket aisles in the UK, with the double cream available at Asda (and soon at Waitrose), and the single cream on the horizon too.
There’s a new alt-milk on the market, with Plantstrong Foodsentering the category with clean-label versions of almond, oat, oat-almond, and oat-walnut. They are available exclusively at over 500 Whole Foods stores in the US, and will soon start selling on its e-commerce site.
Israeli 3D-printed meat producer Steakholder Foods has debuted in the US market with its ready-to-mix SHFish and SHMeat dried extracts for plant-based analogues.
Also in the US, vegan seafood company Impact Food‘s tuna analogue is now available at five Pokeworks locations in New York: Union Square, Grand Central, Williamsburg, Fresh Meadows and Woodbury.
Courtesy: Peter McGuinness/LinkedIn
Over in Chicago, Impossible Foods has brought its burgers and new hot dogs to baseball stadiums across the country, ahead of the latter’s supermarket launch.
Allergen-free vegan cheese brand Pleese Foods, meanwhile, has partnered with foodservice distributor Performance Food Group, meaning its pizza cheese is now available to buyers nationally.
In Asia, beanless coffee startup Prefer is ramping up its presence in Singapore and diversifying its portfolio with a line of black cold brew concentrates (caffeinated and decaf), soon to make their way into cocktail bars in the city-state.
Also in Singapore, Sichuan eatery Chengdu Bowl has added two vegan dishes – sour and spicy soup and mapo tofu – using Finnish food tech startup Solar Foods‘ Solein air protein, which are available for the next three months.
Nestlé has expanded its Harvest Gourmet product range in Malaysia with Puff Pastries in creamy curry, Koran gochujang and Oriental BBQ flavours.
Courtesy: abillion
And review platform abillion has unveiled the Vegan Dining Club, which spotlights 500 restaurants “committed to having great vegan options on their menus”. They will receive premium placements across all of abillion’s assets, keyword priorities, and more footfall.
Finance and company updates
At Upside Foods, chief scientific officer Kevin Kayser has stepped down to launch a consulting group, leaving a vacancy at executive level for one of the world’s leading cultivated meat companies.
Likewise, Triton Algae Innovations co-founder and R&D head Miller Tran is leaving the San Diego-based algae protein company.
Another move comes at Meati, where co-founder Justin Whiteley is stepping aside from his role as CSO to become a technical advisor to the CEO.
UK colour development platform Sparx has raised $3.2M to speed up the commercialisation of its plant-based pigments, which are made from cellulose that can be extracted from waste streams.
Berlin-based Torg has closed an oversubscribed €2.7M seed round to further develop its AI-led platform for foodservice and private-label buyers to find suppliers and source products more efficiently.
Dutch startup Time-Travelling Milkman has secured €850,000 in funding to expand the production and market entry of its sunflower seed fat called Oleocream, which is designed to replace palm and coconut oil in plant-based dairy applications.
Courtesy: Sunlit Foods
South Korea’s Innohas has opened its second plant-based ingredient facility in Jecheon. Describes as the “world’s largest” exclusively plant-based factory, it will produce Korean foods like bibimbap, japchae and bulgogi for its Sunlit Foods brand.
In San Francisco, ingredients giant Givaudan, equipment manufacturer Bühler, and food innovation platform MISTA have opened an extrusion hub for snacks, cereals and plant-based meat at the MISTA Innovation Center.
Dutch plant-based dairy brand Willicroft has released the results of its independent life-cycle assessment, which revealed that its products generate up to 25 times lower emissions than their animal-derived counterparts.
Policy and pop culture
The West Hollywood City Council has voted in favour of vice mayor Chelsea Byers’ proposal to make vegan and vegetarian options the default at catering events like special meetings, luncheons and recreational activities, while meat options will be available upon request.
American model and actress Pamela Anderson is releasing a vegan cookbook titled I Love You: Recipes from the Heart, which will come out on October 15 and features over 80 recipes.
German alternative seafood producer Koralo made it to mainstream television in South Korea, with TVN Korea running a segment about its microalgae- and mycelium-based New F!sh filet.
Another vegan brand represented on TV was UK frozen pizza startup One Planet Pizza, whose co-founder, Joe Hill, appeared on The Apprentice as one of the judges for a vegan-cheese-themed episode.
Courtesy: Omni
Finally, alternative pet food producer OMNI, which will soon launch the UK’s first cultivated meat product alongside Meatly, is offering cat owners £60,000 in annualised salary to have their felines taste its Chicken Revolution product and monitor their experience and any changes in physical conditions.
Australian alternative protein startup Harvest B is entering the blended meat space with 50/50 slow-cooked beef and lamb SKUs, as it prepares for a US expansion and Series A funding round.
Known for its range of plant proteins, boosters and meal solutions, Harvest B has launched a new line of Complementary Proteins that blend animal proteins with plant-based ingredients.
The slow-cooked beef and lamb mark the New South Wales-based company’s first foray into blended meat, and comes after closing its latest seed funding round, which takes total investment in the company to $4.7M. The diced meat products are geared towards the foodservice industry, and bring several environmental, health and cost advantages over conventional meat, while retaining its flavour and texture.
“As we began supplying our products to customers, we realised many were blending our high-performing proteins with animal proteins purely for cost savings,” Harvest B CEO Kristi Riordan, who co-founded the company with COO Alfred Lo in 2020, tells Green Queen.
“Meanwhile, we learned that another group of customers had been trying to scale plant proteins for sustainability, but were facing consumer acceptability challenges,” she adds. “Unlike the customers led by cost, this cohort was motivated by emission reductions and found that blended solutions offered greater consumer acceptance, while also delivering cost savings and nutritional benefits.”
Cheaper, better for you and less polluting
Courtesy: Harvest B
Blended meat is a nascent market, but is gradually gaining steam. Riordan explains that while plant proteins have been “used for decades” in meat products to reduce costs – McNuggets being a prime example – the current first-generation blended meat products rely on binders or casings in the finished product.
Harvest B’s innovation represents the next generation, with a patent-pending tech that combines different plant protein structures in a unique way to enable the creation of whole pieces like diced beef or lamb with an enhanced texture, and without additional ingredients or processing. “Our red meat products are an effective mimic for the structure of slow-cooked beef, lamb or other animal proteins,” says Daniel Mullette, the company’s R&D director.
“This technology underpins Harvest B’s ability to combine whole pieces of raw beef, or lamb, with plant proteins. Furthermore, through the slow cooking process the consistency and texture of the plant proteins complement the animal proteins so well that they are indistinguishable in many dishes,” he adds.
The slow-cooked meats have a 50/50 ration of beef or lamb with a soy and wheat protein blend, and nothing else, which increases their versatility in foodservice applications. The products absorb what’s called the purge, or the high-protein that’s left behind in meat packaging or the pan. This means less waste, less packaging, and lower transportation costs.
Compared to their conventional counterparts, Harvest B’s blended meats deliver 30% more yield for the same cost, with half the cholesterol, 45% less saturated fat, and 30% less packaging needed. The inclusion of plant proteins also means they have fibre, while retaining the iron and vitamin B12 content. In terms of the climate, the products reduce emissions from animal-derived meats by 46%. And they boast 23-24g of protein per 100g.
Overcoming blended meat’s acceptance challenges
Courtesy: Harvest B
The blended meat category can tend to be a very tricky space. Retailers like Aldi and meat giants such as Tyson Foods have previously brought blends to the market, but they were discontinued quickly after failing to capture consumers’ grocery carts.
Some have blamed Tyson’s marketing for its blended meat debacle. Andrew Arentowicz, founder and CEO of US-based 50/50 Foods, told Green Queen last year: “Tyson’s Raised & Rooted blended burger said they were ‘beef and pea protein isolate’ burgers. Who wants to eat – let alone buy – pea protein isolate?”
Mullette echoes this sentiment: “All food products need to deliver a strong value proposition with marketing that authentically connects that to the consumer.” While taste is “always table stakes with food”, there needs to be more that the consumer cares about and sets the product apart. and it’s not sustainability – which blended meat producers have painted as their primary USP. “Truth be told, mainstream consumers don’t want to sacrifice or pay for sustainability. Many mainstream consumers don’t even want to know that there are plants in their food,” he states.
“Meat-eaters already consume a huge amount of plant protein – most brands just don’t focus on this in their marketing,” says Mullette. Harvest B conducted a recent audit of the Australian market, finding that the actual animal meat content in bestselling retail products “would surprise many consumers”. Chicken tenders, for example, comprise just 38-52% meat, beef burgers 67-85%, meatballs 70-84%; and sausage rolls a meagre 18-25%.
“Harvest B believes that achieving taste, in a familiar format, at a more affordable price with better nutritionals gives a compelling reason to buy. Meanwhile, a more sustainable protein is simply the benefit,” he says. “By working with a wide variety of market segments, we anticipate different approaches to marketing depending on the value proposition important to the brand, or venue.”
Tyson’s blended meat failure also came on the retail shelves, which is why taking the foodservice route makes sense for Harvest B. Riordan believes this is an untapped opportunity, given institutional foodservice often has a regulated requirement for protein, cost-per-serve constraints, and a desire to reduce emissions.
“One of Harvest B’s customers told us that we are the only supplier that can improve nutrition while also reducing costs and emissions,” reveals Riordan. “We are also excited to work closely with executive chefs to strategically build Harvest B’s protein portfolio to address the problems they face on a daily basis.”
Its diced beef and lamb are cooked via sous vide before being frozen, and delivered to chefs who can pan-fry, oven-roast or braise the meats, and use them in dishes like curries, stir-fries, salads and soups, among others. They have a 12-month shelf life too, which will appeal to foodservice settings “where convenience and avoidance of food waste are paramount”.
Blended meat approved by chefs and legacy protein producers
Courtesy: Harvest B
Harvest B’s blended meat products will appeal to the 19% of Australians who identify as flexitarians, according to a YouGov poll last year. A separate study additionally suggested that 32% of the country’s population reduced its meat consumption in 2023. The success of blended meat products will rely upon taste more than anything else, with 59% of meat-eaters and 42% of flexitarians calling this the most influential driver of food choices.
To address that, the startup has developed its blended meat range in partnership with animal protein producers, which will also help bring the products to market globally. “Sensory tests were conducted with internal stakeholders at these partners to ensure we were able to achieve a profile that met the expectations of traditional animal protein consumers,” says Riordan.
She adds that the products can be used in institutional foodservice spanning airlines, education, defence, mining, aged care, and hospital sectors: “We have conducted trials with executive chefs and nutritionists across each of these segments who are excited by the taste and texture, as much as they are by the nutritional benefits we can deliver.”
The concept has been proven elsewhere. 50/50 Foods has landed its half-beef, half-plant Both Burger on a Disneyland menu, while Mush Foods’s 50Cut is featured in leading butchery Pat LaFrieda’s new blended burger for foodservice. And it’s not just blended meat that’s making waves, hybrid meats – which combine cultivated meat with plant-based ingredients – are also appearing on the horizon. San Francisco-based startup SciFi Foods, for instance, is aiming to receive regulatory approval for its hybrid beef burgers and enter foodservice by early 2025.
Cultivated meat was in Australian headlines last week after Vow became just the fourth company in the world to obtain the regulatory greenlight for cultivated meat, rolling out its cultivated quail as part of a parfait in select restaurants in Singapore.
“A complementary system works best when taste and value are beneficial to a customer and consumer – creating a driver for systemic behavioural change which, in turn, drives adoption of sustainable practice,” says Mullette. “This is the intent behind Harvest B’s Complementary Proteins; a similar approach could easily be adopted with complementary food products formed from blending plant-based and cultivated proteins.
“If the flavour, texture and value of protein products can be advanced by blending plant-based with cultivated meats, then an advantageous driver exists for its adoption as part of a complete, nutritious global food system.”
Harvest B plans Series A for US expansion
Courtesy: Harvest B
The progress made by companies like Vow and Harvest B signposts the next phase of growth for Australia’s alternative protein sector, which includes product and tech innovation as much as marketing, says Riordan.
“The category was primarily built by idealists who raised awareness of the emissions problem in our food system. However, this also created a strong division between those who eat meat and those who do not with challenges to drive further mainstream adoption,” she explains, noting how Australia’s national science organisation CSIRO rebranded its research portfolio from ‘alt-protein’ to ‘complementary proteins last year. It was “a nod to thinking differently about the product, tech and marketing of our future protein system”.
Harvest B has used the latest capital injection to drive its R&D roadmap further, build its pilot facility, and amp up sales and marketing. “We have received support from the Australian Federal Government via the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre to stand up our manufacturing capabilities,” says Riordan.
The company recently launched its consumer brand, B Strong, into the North American market. The products are focused on meal prep solutions for fitness-oriented consumers, and are available on e-commerce marketplaces like Kroger, Walmart and Amazon.
“B2B remains the immediate focus for Harvest B, particularly in the foodservice and high growth ready meal segments,” Riordan states, revealing that the company will now look to raise a Series A funding round to support its B2B expansion in the US. Slated for the upcoming financial year, the blended meat producer is targeting a sum of around $7M.
But this period will also see substantive Australian federal funding programmes become available to local food manufacturers. Harvest B will tap into these programmes to complement its raise, meaning its Series A sum may not need to be as large.
“We remain bullish about the opportunities the market has to offer,” says Riordan. “Classic innovation theory shows time and again that crossing the chasm from early adopters to the mainstream requires a step change. From a pragmatic view, we need more work on product-market fit and the value propositions of affordability and health – especially for market segments where high protein is required.”
She continues: “We believe that improved sustainability will follow solving those problems. And we believe that plants can enable high quality, affordable protein for meals designed for the way people like to eat – whether vegan, vegetarian or meat eaters.”
One of Asia-Pacific’s foremost plant-based meat companies, New Zealand-based Sunfed Meats is shutting down after facing supply chain pressure, high costs, and a loss of faith from its investors.
A week after it emerged that investors have slashed the company’s valuation to zero, Sunfed Meats founder Shama Sukul Lee has confirmed that the Auckland-based plant-based meat startup is closing after nearly a decade in operation.
In a video posted on her social media channels, Lee confirmed reports that the brand’s products were no longer available in Australia after inventory ran out in January. Its remaining stock in New Zealand is set to dry up in the next two months.
“Despite Sunfed’s self-evident competence in unique products and manufacturing and FMCG, Sunfed’s VC investor did not see value in that. And that is of course their prerogative, as they can put their money elsewhere where they can get bigger, faster, easier valuation returns,” said Lee. “It probably needs to be said that Sunfed’s VC investors chose not to clear the way for Sunfed, but instead held on to their preferential claims, which complicated new capital options for the company.”
Lee founded Sunfed Meats in 2015 as one of Asia-Pacific’s first plant-based meat startups. Its first product didn’t come into the market until 2018, but the Chicken Free Chicken was instantly popular among consumers and drove the brand’s growth.
The company’s portfolio is focused on clean labels with a base of pea protein, faba bean protein, extra virgin olive oil and yeast extract. “I was not happy with the vegan junk food options in the market and wanted to see if we could make something which would offer the good things about meat, namely nutrient density, low-carb and allergen-free,” explained Lee.
“I was also not interested in making mince or its variants like burgers, but instead wanted to make fully formed whole pieces, and it was important to me to make these as cleanly as possible using simply heat and water,” she added. (Although the company did add a minced SKU, presumably to meet market demand.)
Lee outlined that the company had four phases of growth to chart: R&D, market validation, productisation, and breaking even. She and her husband bootstrapped the business with NZ$112,000 and faced plenty of challenges as a young startup. “The whole thing looked doomed to fail, but we eventually had some major breakthroughs.”
Courtesy: Sunfed Meats
In 2016, the company received NZ$1.2M from several VCs during its market validation stage, before its chicken analogue shot the brand to success. It entered all major grocery stores in the country, and led to another $10M capital injection, $5M of which was from Australian VC firm Blackbird Ventures. The investment would allow Sunfed Meats to set up a hygienic food facility, novel manufacturing lines, and an FMCG supply chain, as well as develop and launch new products.
Its portfolio soon expanded to Boar Free Bacon, Bull Free Beef and Fish Free Tuna, and the company’s success saw it turn over NZ$4M in revenue and enter the Australian market. But just as it was looking to move into its profitability phase, things took a turn with the pandemic.
Post-Covid troubles had investor ‘write Sunfed off’
Describing it as “Covid hell”, Lee explained that Sunfed Meats went into “chronic business survival mode” just to keep production going. “There was one crisis after another, with staff shortages, supply chain disruptions and skyrocketing costs.” But Sunfed Meats managed to ride the wave and keep supermarkets stocked,” she said.
“We were pretty battered and bruised afterwards and needed a capital injection to get on top of things. Unlike other companies in this plant-based space, Sunfed did not take hundreds of millions of dollars of investment,” she noted. The last investment round was in 2018, and Lee said that the startup’s achievements since receiving “that minimal investment” have been “self-evidently remarkable”.
“However, it also meant that we ran very lean for far too long with not much resources for growth activities, such as distribution and marketing. With Covid, new capital had become harder as markets tightened up and priorities shifted. And Sunfed’s existing VC investors were no longer interested in supporting the business.”
She added that investors had “written Sunfed off”, explaining that a lot of venture capitalists had jumped into the “plant-based gold rush thinking they could get fast valuation returns” as is the case in the digital space, but manufacturing and FMCG have a lot more complexity and moving parts, and are hence a longer-term play.
Courtesy: Sunfed Meats
Eventually, Sunfed was not able to become profitable, and Lee had to make the decision to shut down the company due to unfavourable market conditions. “It has been an edifying decade-long journey in starting, building and now closing Sunfed. I’ve been humbled by it and I’m grateful for it. Thank you for the adventure,” she said.
It is currently unclear how many jobs are affected, but LinkedIn indicates that the company has 14 employees.
Lee noted that it’s a “fact that the plant-based bubble burst” and the category has been “undergoing a reality check”. “Fuelled by easy VC money, the category became saturated with junk food masked as healthy, and people now see through that. This also made it more apparent just how different Sunfed is, and why customers value it,” she explained.
The plant-based meat sector has had a tough couple of years globally, with investment and sales on the decline, and startups like New School Foods, Ordinary Seafood and Nowadays ceasing operations. Within Asia-Pacific, while Australia and New Zealand overtook Singapore as the most well-funded alternative protein region in the first half of 2023, this only totalled to $20M, an 87% decrease from the previous year.
However, brands like Australia’s v2food are seeing revenue growth (at 6% per year), and between 2022 and 2023, the number of meat analogues in the country’s supermarkets grew by 14%. And to offer dissatisfied meat-eaters a novel take on meat, Vow is in the middle of a public consultation phase to receive regulatory approval for its cultivated quail product in Australia and New Zealand, following its greenlight in Singapore last week.
At the inaugural THAIFEX-HOREC Asia in Bangkok last month, representation for veganism was strong, particularly for plant-based milk, with a host of startups presenting new innovations in the space.
March brought with it scorching heat in Bangkok. 35°C really felt like 45°C, and it was on one of those days that I made my way to the Impact Arena in the Thai capital’s Muang Thong Thani development. And boy was I thankful, for there were exhibitors with vegan-friendly slushies, iced drinks and ice creams that as much quenched your thirst as they piqued your curiosity.
My eye was, of course, on all things plant-based. And in the giant hall, there were plenty of options that caught my eye. Not least from Thai J.Tip Food, which bedazzled me with a ham made from – wait for it – lotus root. It was unveiling its new vegan ready-meal brand Sun N Moon, which also happened to become the source of my lunch (a vegan massaman curry with quinoa).
But really, plant-based milk was the star of the show, with several different stalls dedicated to championing dairy alternatives in new and innovative ways, including powdered forms and barista milks specifically crafted for specialty coffee.
Oat milk powders evoke childhood nostalgia
Courtesy: Green Queen
Plant-based milk already exists in several forms outside the traditional liquid version, including nut milk pastes, frozen concentrates and oat milk powders. But Singapore-based Oatbedient is focusing on something completely novel: a range of malted oat milk powders that you can drink straight up, a la Ovaltine.
Launched in 2022, Oatbedient offers four products: plain, chocolate, an oat and chia blend, and a sugar-free Lite version. All you do is add the specified amount of hot water to the mix, and voila! You’re living your childhood again.
“We felt there was a gap in the market, because most of the oat milks are all in liquid form, so we wanted to offer another alternative to give consumers some form of convenience,” Oatbedient co-founder and senior business development manager Alex Seh told me. “Some of the consumers we met say it tastes like Horlicks. That wasn’t an intentional thing – we just wanted to find the right ingredient that’s good enough for human consumption, but can bring up the taste to an optimal level, so you can enjoy a cup of delicious oat milk.”
Many plant-based foods can be processed, which has become a turnoff for many consumers. But while there’s definitely a health play here, taste remains king. “The product itself has no palm oil, less sugar, non-GMO, etc. But at the same time, it has to taste delicious. Because what’s the point if we give you all the health benefits, but sacrifice the taste?” he noted. After taste, he believed price is the leading consumption driver for plant-based food in Asia. Sustainability continues to be increasingly important too.
“We have forecast the rise of waterless plant milks some time back, making products more eco-friendly, reducing packaging waste and cutting down on CO2 production and shipping emissions,” said Rachel Tan, food and drink strategist at WGSN. “Opportunities around frozen, shelf-stable and refrigerated are huge, alongside different formats including pastes and concentrates.”
She added: “These new formats will not only appeal to climatarians who value sustainability, but also a larger cost- and convenience-conscious consumer base when you think about longer shelf-lives, portability, customisability and food waste reduction.”
Clean-label and barista milks take the cake
Courtesy: Green Queen
For all the talk about convenience, it wasn’t just the malted oat milk powders Oatbedient was showcasing at THAIFEX-HOREC Asia. The company has just entered the liquid space with barista and Zero oat milk varieties. “To be a full-fledged plant-based milk player, I think inevitably, you need to offer what is already out there in the market,” Seh explained.
He alluded to how consumers want more clean-label products. “The Zero milk is the cleanest oat milk you can find on the market, because it’s just three ingredients: oats, water and Himalayan salt. That’s it,” he said. “The very positive feedback we’ve gotten is: ‘It’s amazing you guys have this alternative. I like oat milk but I don’t like the oil.’”
“Health-minded consumers are becoming increasingly concerned with how products are made, with plant-based options particularly under scrutiny,” explained Tan. “A recent slump in the sales of plant-based products in the US was partly attributed to a desire for more ‘clean labels’. Pioneer brands are prioritising natural ingredients and scrapping alienating processing methods to increase transparency, enhance health credentials and build consumer trust.”
Courtesy: Green Queen
As for barista milks, there was Australian representation in this space from the likes of Milklab and The Alternative Dairy Co. Both exclusively work on milks for coffee, with the former having just launched in Thailand. With a portfolio of oat, soy, coconut, almond and macadamia milks (alongside a UHT dairy option too), Milklab is in 29 countries, and has accounts with industry giants like Starbucks in India, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, and McDonald’s in Australia.
A brand representative for Milklab told me that while soy milk remains the most popular alt-milk in Thailand, oat is now the leading consumption driver of plant-based dairy – playing to the country’s affinity for coffee mocktails, its stall was all about highlighting its milks in iced beverages.
Courtesy: Green Queen
The Alternative Dairy Co., meanwhile, is owned by Sanitarium, the parent company of So Good. But this is geared exclusively towards foodservice, with So Good spearheading the business’s retail market in Autralia. It makes oat, soy, coconut and almond milk – the latter is the most neutral-tasting almond milk I’ve ever tasted. A company spokesperson told me that Australia’s alt-milk culture is similar to the US’s, in that almond milk has always reigned supreme, but oat is catching up, and is the future of the sector.
Interestingly, she added that plant-based milks now make up about a third of the market in Australia’s coffee industry, and in areas like Melbourne and Bondi Beach, they make up over half of the total. This means that in certain areas, it’s dairy that’s the alternative. How about that?
Oat milk goes in on the granular
Courtesy: Green Queen
The barista milk party didn’t end there. The most intriguing player at THAIFEX-HOREC Asia was Singapore’s Noomoo, which was launched last year and is working on a full range of plant-based milks. While almond and soy are slated for the future, the current lineup – which is in over 250 cafés in Singapore and Malaysia – comprises coconut and two oat milks. You read that right.
The coconut milk, which is combined with pea protein, is the freshest-tasting coconut milk I’ve had, and might just be one of my favourite plant-based milks overall, given it works as a standalone, in teas like hojicha and genmaicha, and in coffee too.
As for the dual barista oat milk range, the idea is to create products that have specific functions for different kinds of coffee. The milk titled ‘Barista’ is crafted from Australian oats and high-oleic canola oil, and geared towards medium to dark roasts. “The Australia one is created for when the cups are bigger. In some countries, they like ice and a lot of milk, so it needs to be a bit lighter and goes with darker roasts, which are chocolatey and nutty. This will help to round it and balance it,” co-founder and chief action officer Nick Chan told me.
He explained that the milk’s formulation isn’t heavy enough to mask the acidity of very light-roasted coffees: “If you’re a coffee connoisseur, you might not like or appreciate the acidity of coffee.” If you are one, though, the Artisan oat milk is for you.
Courtesy: Green Queen
Based on Mongolian oats, which he said are naturally higher in protein and enhance the frothability of the milk, this one is a bit heavier on the oats (11%, versus 10% for the Barista blend) and contains low-sodium lake salt, creating a creamy element without interfering too much with the flavour. Adding more oats to make the coffee shine more might feel counterintuitive, but it works.
Chan explained that given its neutrality and creaminess, oat milk complements coffee better than other milks, and is fast capturing Asia’s plant-based milk market. “If you just go to oat milk for two weeks, you cannot go back to milk,” he suggested.
“This trend towards barista milk is in line with the rise of fourth-wave coffee which democratises quality, encompasses sustainability and bottom-up creativity. Coffee consumers are becoming more sophisticated, seeking greater sensory engagement, and wanting to participate in the home café trend,” noted Tan. “This will have legs beyond food service to new RTD styles and at-home consumption. Complementary categories like dairy, nut milk, syrups and condiments can create products that elevate drinking rituals at home – including speciality barista milk.”
Noomoo will be looking to take market share from Asia’s oat milk market leader, Oatside. Oatly, which will also release a light-roast-friendly barista milk this year, is the other major player in the region. Noomoo is already in over 250 cafes in Singapore and Malaysia. Now, it’s launching in Thailand, and aims to target Indonesia and South Korea next. “At the moment, I’m trying to get professional endorsements for the products, which is why I’m working with baristas,” he said.
As a former barista, I can safely say the endorsement would be universal.
US biotech manufacturing firm Liberation Labs has secured $12.5M in funding to support the ongoing construction of its large-scale production facility in Indiana, ahead of its Series A round.
Liberation Labs’ latest capital injection of $12.5M will advance the building of its manufacturing plant in Richmond, Indiana, which is intended to serve an increasing demand for proteins made via precision fermentation.
Food tech VC firm Agronomics – which now holds a 37.5% stake in the company – invested $10M in this round, with additional funding from existing investor Siddhi Capital. It brings the total equity-linked financing in Liberation Labs to $33.5M, and the company additionally has non-dilutive funding commitments totalling $55M – this includes $30M in equipment financing and a $25M USDA-backed loan.
The investment will convert on the same terms as Liberation Labs’ upcoming Series A round, which is expected to raise a minimum of $37.5M and support the continued constriction of its Indiana plant.
“The new funding from Agronomics and Siddhi Capital comes as we continue to make significant progress in building out our operations team and advancing facility construction – including the installation of key equipment like fermenters and spray dryers,” said Liberation Labs co-founder and CEO Mark Warner. “Each day, we’re closer to our goal of unlocking the potential of domestic manufacturing of novel proteins for both food and industrial use.”
Courtesy: Liberation Labs
Liberation Labs aims to open facility in early 2025
Founded in 2022, Liberation Labs aims to commercialise precision-fermented ingredients via a global network of purpose-built manufacturing facilities to produce bio-based products at scale, with a fit-for-purpose design that can enable cost-effective solutions.
Its factory in Richmond, which is expected to cost around $115M, will be capable of producing between 600 to 1,200 tonnes of protein annually, and bring in $40M in yearly revenue. It will have downstream processing capabilities and support a variety of clients, from well-funded precision fermentation startups to established ingredient and CPG companies.
If things go well, the company will also look to build another factory five times greater in size, with the potential to generate around $160M in annual revenue (this will be financed via more traditional project financing). “Long term, we’re looking at six geographies worldwide,” Warner told AFN last year. “In each one, we expect to build initially a 600,000-litre launch facility, and ultimately a four-million-litre commercial facility.”
The company is hoping to address the precision fermentation industry’s capacity bottleneck through the design, build and operation of its purpose-built biomanufacturing platform, Bio3. The Indiana facility is about halfway through its construction and – provided that Liberation Labs secures the targeted Series A funds – is expected to be operational by Q1 2025.
It chose Richmond as a location due to several key factors, including access to sugar inputs, utility rates, cost and availability of labour, the regulatory environment, and the availability of government incentives. “This type of company and industry is a perfect fit for the Hoosier state given Indiana’s strong agriculture and manufacturing sectors,” Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb has previously said. “We love to see innovative new technologies creating quality jobs and career pathways for both today’s and tomorrow’s workforce.”
Speaking about the latest investment, Agronomics executive chairman Jim Mellom said: “Liberation Labs continues to deliver on the project milestones of its launch facility in Indiana. We have huge confidence in the team’s ability to execute and believe that Liberation Labs will become the first company in Agronomics’ portfolio to be cash-generative.”
Courtesy: Liberation Labs
A big year for precision fermentation
Liberation Labs’ raise comes at a time when precision fermentation is progressing rapidly in the US and internationally, whether it’s product launches, investment rounds or regulatory breakthroughs.
The eventual mainstreaming of this sector was signposted by releases by two of the world’s biggest food companies. Unilever partnered with California’s Perfect Day to use the latter’s precision-fermented whey protein as the base for a new lactose-free chocolate ice cream by Breyers, while Nestlé unveiled an animal-free Better Whey protein powder under its Orgain brand just weeks earlier.
Meanwhile, San Francisco’s New Culture became the first company to obtain self-affirmed GRAS status for animal-free casein in March, just as Dutch startup Vivici earned this certification for its whey protein a month earlier. In January, Israel’s Imagindairy received a ‘no further questions’ letter from the FDA for its precision-fermented whey. Californian startup Oobli has also received the FDA letter for its Oubli Sweet Protein.
There has been a spate of funding announcements in the sector too. Just last week, Finnish precision fermentation egg producer Onego Bio closed a $40M Series A round and announced it expects to achieve self-affirmed GRAS status in the US soon. Perfect Day itself closed a $90M Series A funding round in January, while casein producer Standing Ovation (France) secured €3M and precision fermentation biomanufacturer Cauldron Ferm (Australia) brought in $6M.
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois has committed $600M to its biomanufacturing hub (which focuses on precision fermentation), and in May, the EU will open applications for investments totalling €50M in precision fermentation and algae-based food startups as part of its Horizon Europe scheme.
Clearly, a lot is happening in the precision fermentation sector – and it’s why trade bodies have come together to set a refined definition that provides clarity and distinction from other novel food technologies. Liberation Labs’s funding is the latest in a long list of developments, and one would expect them to continue as the year progresses.
As it rolls out its first cultivated meat product following regulatory approval in Singapore, Vow CEO George Peppou speaks to Green Queen about the Forged quail parfait, the need to do things differently, and consumers’ approach to novel food tech.
As the first Australian cultivated meat brand to earn regulatory clearance anywhere in the world, Vow’s momentous achievement has raised plenty of intrigue – and questions.
In case you missed it, the Syndey-based startup is today launching its cultivated Japanese quail in Singapore’s Mandala Club, after the country’s regulator gave it the go-ahead to sell the product. But unlike other rollouts of cultivated meat, where chefs are supplied with the meat itself (which they then incorporate into dishes), Vow is taking a novel approach. What restaurant kitchens get is a parfait containing its cultivated quail.
The product coincides with the unveiling of its premium consumer brand, Forged, and a new metaphorical bird called Quailia, which is supposed to represent an animal that only exists to be eaten, unlike its real-world counterpart. “Quailia is a metaphor for what we are doing: creating new experiences rather than replicating food animals make,” Vow co-founder and CEO George Peppou tells Green Queen.
It all feels a little different with this latest cultivated meat launch – and that’s because it’s meant to be. “We believe in creating entirely new food experiences,” says Peppou. “Quail is a great way to introduce consumers to this. It’s familiar enough to be interesting, but not something eaten regularly enough for consumers to have a strong view of what it is and isn’t.”
What’s in the Forged Parfait?
Courtesy: Vow
Peppou reveals that the parfait is the first of several products Vow is launching the Forged brand this year. But why start with this? “Parfait was the most gentle introduction to our deliberately different products,” he notes. “Parfait is similar to a very light pâté. Forged Parfait combines a flavour and texture combination you can’t find anywhere else. The result is a delightful contradiction: rich yet delicate with a unique weightless, melt-in-your-mouth quality.”
Companies like Eat Just, Aleph Farms (both of whom are cleared to sell their products) and Meatable are all using a hybrid approach in their initial products, but Vow’s quail itself comprises 100% quail cells. “We don’t hybridise with any other inputs,” confirms Peppou.
So what goes in the parfait? “Cultured Japanese quail, a bit of garlic, onion, brandy and butter – exactly what you’d find in a pâté, just much lighter and creamier.” The Quailia makes up 60% of the product, which additionally contains butter and port wine that’s clarified with egg whites and milk. Being a meat product grown from real animal cells, this was never going to be vegan, but the company is doubling down on its for-meat-lovers rhetoric.
“We are exclusively focused on making foods for meat-eaters, which is why featuring butter on the ingredient list is not an issue,” says Peppou. “Vegans and vegetarians eating the food we produce doesn’t have an impact.”
This chimes with what the Vow CEO – a meat-eater – told Green Queen founding editor Sonalie Figueiras on the Green Queen in Conversation: Cultivated Meat Pioneers in October. “When I think about how can I change the behaviour of people like me, like my family, it’s not going to be by making something which approximates the meat we eat today – that’s a very hard sell for people that already have integrated meat into their diets and have no intention of changing that.”
He added: “We have to make foods that are better than the meat that we can get today: tastier, more nutritious, offering functionality that animals can’t.”
To elevate and showcase the potential of such products, cultivated meat companies rely on world-class chefs to incorporate their innovations into dishes. Vow’s debut will come courtesy of a seven-course omakase menu at Mandala Club’s Japanese restaurant Mori, with a series of exclusive dinners running until the end of the month.
“The product delivered to chefs is a packaged finished parfait,” Peppou says. “The use cases are limited only by the creativity of the chefs, as diners will see at Mandala, and at other venues in the future.” (Vow has a host of other restaurant collaborations lined up for the next two months, but it remains tight-lipped when pressed for further details.)
APAC ‘more open-minded’ to novel foods
Courtesy: Vow
The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) was the first regulator to approve the sale of cultivated meat, granting that honour to Eat Just back in 2020. Since then, Eat Just and fellow Californian startup Upside Foods have obtained approval in the US, and Aleph Farms in its home country of Israel.
It cements Singapore’s status as a hotbed for food tech and regulatory progress, despite having one of the most stringent processes globally. Dutch cultivated pork producer Meatable and French cell-cultured chicken startup Vital Meat have also filed for clearance in the island nation, with the former expecting to go to market in mid-2024.
“It was a very thorough assessment, which was very important to us so that consumers know our products are safe beyond doubt,” says Peppou. “The team at SFA were rigorous across all parts of the application, paying special attention to media components and ensuring our risk assessment around residues was to the highest standards.”
Europe is still lagging behind when it comes to cultivated meat regulation, given it has the strictest novel foods standards in the world. Up until recently, the UK followed pre-Brexit EU rules too, but now, a shake-up is on the horizon. In the US, while several companies are awaiting FDA and USDA approval, there’s the more immediate issue of dealing with incoming political bans on cultivated meat.
Consumer surveys show mixed results about the acceptance of these proteins. In the US, one poll suggested that 45% are open to trying these foods. This drops to just over a third (34%) in the UK. Another survey shows 47% of Germans and 42% of Austrians are willing to eat them at least once.
In India, meanwhile, a 2019 study showed that 56% of citizens are “very or extremely likely” to buy cultivated meat regularly. And recent research polling Singaporean diners who had tried Eat Just’s cultivated chicken found that on a scale of 1 to 5, the acceptance of cultivated meat was high (4.19). In fact, buying and eating these products “significantly boosted” people’s acceptance, with diners expressing a strong willingness to try them again (a score of 4.41/5) and recommending them to loved ones (4.45/5).
“Asia-Pacific, in general, is much more open-minded to novel food from a consumer standpoint,” says Peppou. “At a regulatory level, it’s much less politicised than in the EU and US,” he adds. Vow is currently in the middle of a public consultation process for its application to the bilateral Food Standards Australia and New Zealand, with the next round due to open in the middle of the year. “We are working with several regulators across four continents in different stages of engagement all the way through to filing,” he says. This includes the US too.
Tackling bans and backlash
Courtesy: Vow
Lately, there has been increased attention on what is termed ‘food tech neophobia’. “Often, what we’ve got is a phobia of new stuff, a sort of almost a sort of comfort reaction of regard to cling to the old stuff,” environmental journalist George Monbiot said in an interview with Figueiras last year.
This fear has been exacerbated by the attack on cultivated meat in the US. The states of Alabama, Arizona, Wisconsin, Texas, Nebraska, Tennessee and Florida have all taken aim at the industry by proposing a series of bans – whether that’s to do with labelling or even production and sale – with the latter on the brink of passing a bill to effectively criminalise cultivated meat.
Meanwhile, a host of negative media coverage – from Bloomberg to the New York Times – hasn’t helped things. “It’s an inevitable backlash by the media to overly optimistic timelines by companies and failed promises, and by farmers to a movement that calls for an end to their livelihoods,” suggests Peppou. “Naturally, farmers are upset by founders and companies that make them out to be a problem to be solved, and politicians are capitalising on that anger, while the companies have failed to convince consumers to replace a tried and tested product with an expensive, lesser replica.”
He adds: “We have been very clear from the beginning: we think sustainable, open-range farming – the kind practised here in Australia – is a critical part of the future of our food systems, and that cultured meat only makes sense as a way to create new, delicious foods, not imitate the food we already know and love. We are proud to create an entirely new category of food designed specifically for meat-eaters to enjoy.”
Peppou disagrees with the notion that novel tech has put many people off. “When Impossible [Foods] launched in Australia, there was zero controversy and now it’s on our shelves.” The Californian plant-based meat giant was something he also mentioned in Green Queen’s podcast last year. He praised Impossible Foods’ marketing and messaging, but said he would do things differently around the consumer angle: “There’s not really any selfish driver to purchase Impossible.”
Expanding on this, he stated: “It’s a direct, drop-in replacement for beef mince. It’s so meaty that it sort of has been seen by meat eaters, and it’s like: ‘What is any individual meathead getting out of incorporating impossible into their diet?’” He continued: “There’s not really anything in it for me to make my lasagna out of Impossible. In fact, there are reasons not to: it’s more expensive and it’s a bit of a hard choice because I have had to make a conscious decision to do something differently than I would otherwise want to.”
Peppou echoes this thinking when asked about the challenges – whether they’re political, optics, financial or production-related – facing cultivated meat in what is going to be a very important year for the industry. “By changing the process of production, rather than the food itself, you are asking consumers to change their behaviour for the benefit of the planet alone. Despite what we’d like to believe, those externalities don’t matter as much as we think to a vast majority of consumers when it comes to purchasing,” he says.
“The only way for us to change our behaviour is to offer new foods that consumers choose selfishly. That’s why Vow is different, because we innovate instead of imitating, and therefore offer something that consumers will selfishly choose, because it is deliberately different.”
The proof, of course, will be in the pudd– sorry, parfait.
Australia’s Vow Food has received regulatory approval for its cultivated quail in Singapore, becoming the fourth company to do so globally. It will unveil the product as part of a parfait under its Forged brand at the Mandala Club, followed by other restaurants in the city-state.
A regulatory greenlight, a restaurant debut, a consumer brand launch, and an entirely new concept animal – it’s a big day for Vow Food.
The Sydney-based startup is just the second company to be approved to sell cultivated meat in Singapore, which will allow it to launch its cell-cultured Japanese quail product – called Forged Parfait – onto diners’ plates, starting today at the Mandala Club, which will host a series of exclusive dinners using the parfait at its Japanese eatery Mori.
As part of Forged, its new premium consumer brand, Vow Food also invented Quailia, a new concept animal inspired by quail that serves the sole purpose of being “utterly delicious”. The idea is to present consumers with something they’ve never tasted before. “Quailia is a metaphor for what we are doing: creating new experiences rather than replicating food animals make,” co-founder and CEO George Peppou tells Green Queen.
“We believe that the future of cultured meat is not in replicating what already exists, but in creating deliberately different foods designed for meat-eaters,” he says. “This is the first product of its kind to be approved anywhere in the world: not an imitation of chicken or beef, but a truly unique cultured meat designed to elevate our experience of food.”
The Singapore Food Agency (SFA), which assessed Vow Food’s application for over a year, was famously the first regulator ever to approve cultivated meat when it gave the go-ahead to Eat Just’s chicken in 2020. Since then, Eat Just and fellow Californian startup Upside Foods (also making chicken) have received the greenlight in the US, and Aleph Farms has done so in its home country of Israel for cultivated beef.
Only Eat Just (under its Good Meat brand) and Upside Foods have served cultivated meat products to diners so far, making Vow Food the third to do so with its restaurant launch. Alongside the Mandala Club, the Forged Parfait will land on the menus of several other eateries in Singapore over the next two months.
A metaphorical bird meant to be eaten
Courtesy: Vow Food
Founded in 2019 by Peppou and chief commercial officer Tim Noakesmith, Vow Food has raised $56M over three funding rounds, including a $49.8M Series A in 2022. It made headlines – a lot of them – last year after unveiling a wooly mammoth meatball from sheep cells. It garnered everyone’s attention, with some questions raised over the intentions of the project.
“We needed to do something so outrageous that it would break through into mainstream media,” Peppou told Green Queen in the days after the announcement. While the meatball wasn’t something Vow Food was intended for commercialisation, its cultivated quail very much is.
The startup has always talked about its intention to “invent entirely new meats” that “meat-lovers can and would choose selfishly”, and has been known to work with zebra, alpaca, water buffalo, kangaroo and crocodile cells. The development of Quailia is an extension of this vision, with the company referring to it as a “carefully crafted subspecies of the Japanese quail”.
It takes inspiration from the bird’s scientific name, Coturnix japonica, adopting the moniker Coturnix Fornax instead. Vow Food describes Qualia as a blend of flavours and textures that unlocks an “unparalleled gastronomic experience” and, crucially, a bird that has no heart, bread, feather or bones. “Quailia is the ultimate expression of what we do – create foods that are intentionally unlike anything we’ve had before,” says Peppou.
The company conducted a 1,000-person survey of Singaporeans who frequent high-end restaurants, and found that more than half want to experience never-before-tasted ingredients. It’s why it decided to debut the product as part of a parfait, which is made up of 60% of its cultivated quail, butter, shallots, tapioca starch, port wine, brandy, garlic, vegetable and fruit concentrates, olive oil, salt and thyme.
The Quailia itself, meanwhile, is 100% cultivated quail cells, eschewing the hybrid approach being adopted by the likes of Eat Just, Aleph Farms, Dutch producer Meatable, and others. “We believe in creating entirely new food experiences,” Peppou says. “Quail is a great way to introduce consumers to this. It’s familiar enough to be interesting, but not something eaten regularly enough for consumers to have a strong view of what it is and isn’t.”
Vow Foods prides itself on speed and cost efficacy
Courtesy: Vow Food
In October 2022, Vow Food opened one of the largest cultivated meat facilities in the world. Dubbed Factory 1, it is said to be capable of producing 30 tonnes of product per year. It simultaneously announced that it had begun developing a sister site, Factory 2, which would have the capability of manufacturing 100 times more cultivated meat. Peppou kept his cards close to the chest about the second facility, but hinted that “it’s going very well”.
It will help Vow Food push past a huge industry bottleneck. Scalability is one of cultivated meat’s biggest challenges, and has impeded the continued progress of such products’ market availability. “So far, the global cultured meat industry has suffered from a lack of scalability,” says Peppou, “and products that promise improved sustainability or reduced environmental impact but offer nothing new in terms of taste, texture or appeal when compared to the existing meat offerings.”
He adds: “At Vow, we’ve cracked both those challenges by creating an irresistible product that consumers will want because it’s unlike anything else on offer, and that we are already producing at commercial scale.”
Vow Food COO Ellen Dinsmoor confirms that at present, the company is producing over 100kg of product per month and “will continue to ramp up production as Forged launches in more venues in Singapore and more jurisdictions around the world”.
She adds: “We’re doing it for a fraction of the capital of the largest cultured meat companies in the world.” For context, Eat Just has raised over $850M, Upside Foods has brought in $608M, and Aleph Farms $115M. The five-year-old business also notes that it has commercialised in half the time of some of these companies.
Speaking to Green Queen founding editor Sonalie Figueiras on the Green Queen in Conversation: Cultivated Meat Pioneers in October, Peppou had explained that Vow Food’s first product would be foodservice-only. “How do you make sure people’s first contacts and first experiences are as positive as possible, especially when there is a product that has some assumed knowledge around how you cook it? How do you have a great experience?” he noted, outlining his thinking.
He now confirms these plans, saying that the company is “entirely focused on foodservice” for Forged, with “no imminent plans” for a retail launch.
You can taste Forged Parfait as part of a seven-course meal
Courtesy: Vow Food
“We knew we wanted to launch our products into the Singaporean market first, not only because of the globally renowned culinary scene, but also because of the clear regulatory pathways and the ease of doing business,” notes Dismoor.
The SFA’s assessment process is described by Vow Foods’ head of regulatory affairs Andrew Janis as “amongst the most rigorous in the world”, and one that sets a “clear benchmark for other jurisdictions in Asia”. “Singapore was an obvious choice for Vow given that the SFA has significant experience assessing cultured meat and is regarded as a global leader when it comes to regulatory rigour,” he says.
“We have been deeply impressed by the SFA’s commitment to food safety and are confident that their approval will set us up well as we look to enter additional markets,” Janis added. Speaking of which, Vow Food is currently in the middle of the public consultation stage of the regulatory process in Australia and New Zealand, with the next round due to open towards the middle of the year. The company has indicated that it is engaged in conversations with regulators on four continents.
For the Forged Parfait, it collaborated with Ryan Clift, chef-owner of contemporary eatery Tippling Club, who has been working with the brand for two years. “I’m so blown away by the profile of this product. It’s sweet, has a beautiful, delicate flavour, and the texture is always perfect. It’s the perfect parfait.”
The product’s Mandala Club debut will run from April 12-27, where intimate seatings of only 14 guests will experience a S$289 ($214) seven-course Omakase menu featuring the cultivated quail. Curated by Mori head chef Chun Hong La and Forged chef Adem Kurcan, the menu features savoury cannoli filled with Forged Parfait and served with Black Pearl caviar; a Hokkaido Wagyu Sando (a milk bun topped with A5 Hokkaido Wagyu and Forged Parfait), and Forged Brûlée (layered with port jelly and cognac-poached morels).
“It’s really about finding those true fans, finding the people that are really engaged, and I’ve been on that journey with us, bringing them together, and learning as much as we possibly can about what they love about it, and how they talk about it,” Peppou said on Green Queen’s podcast last year. “The first few months for us are going to be about learning from consumers and learning from customers before we go and try to scale out to heaps of different restaurants and food service. So, there’ll be lots of small, intimate pop-ups all over the city, which will give you a chance to taste.”
He added: “We have a chance to really shape and change our food system. We have a chance to take an experiment with meat in a way that no one else has been able to, and that’s always been the thing which excites and inspires me, and do so in a way which creates positive benefits. I think Vow will be successful, if we either directly, or through inspiring the direction of others, are able to shift at least a single-digit percentage of meat consumption away from animals to something else.”
Vow Food may not be the only cultivated meat company to receive SFA approval this year, with Meatable and France’s Vital Meat both poised to get the greenlight soon.
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers flavoured barista milks, Oatly’s new Jiggers, and Quorn’s summer revamp.
New products and launches
Florida-based Niúke Foods has rolled out an extensive range of alt-milks and vegan spreads. These include quinoa, peanut and peanut-cacao milk, and eight flavours of chickpea mayos (from beets and carrots to sriracha and merquen). They can be found on the company’s e-commerce site, and are available for foodservice too.
Courtesy: Niúke Foods
In another US plant-based dairy launch, Muscle Milk has introduced its first line of plant protein shakes in chocolate and vanilla flavours. While it is packed with 25-30g of protein from peas and brown rice, the company says it may not be vegan as one of its flavouring agents is processed with bone char.
Swiss retailer Coop has partnered with Austrian upcycled food producer Kern Tec to launch an apricot kernel milk, which is now available at Coop stores nationwide.
Also in Switzerland, Oatly has partnered with national rail company SBB to launch the 20ml Jigger product it teased during its Q4 earnings call, which will be available at all onboard dining carriages for no extra charge. The product will roll out in the UK with foodservice distributors Brakes and Bidfood.
Oatly further announced a deal with Virgin Voyages to serve its Barista Edition oat milk at the onboard Grounds Club cafés across its fleet.
In the UK, Finnish brand Oddlygood has launched its gluten-free barista oat milks in three flavours – original, vanilla and salted caramel – alongside lemon and berry desserts. The products are available at Asda now (the original barista flavour will be rolled out in June).
Courtesy: Oddlygood
South Korean vegan cheese brand Armored Fresh introduced its shredded oat milk mozzarella at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, following its market entry in the US.
Harvard spinoff Mooji Meats‘ plant-based ribeye steaks are being trialled at Boston restaurants, including La Voile, Prima and Veggie Galaxy, with a wider rollout expected later this year.
UK meat-free market leader Quorn has announced a product revamp for the summer, with reformulated cocktail sausages and picnic eggs, and a revamped deli mini fillets line with two new flavours – all in refreshed packaging.
Colarado-based vegan supplements brand Pet Releaf has unveiled a line of wellness products: a postbiotic for dogs and cats and a fish-free omega-3. They are the company’s first non-hemp supplements, and are designed to be used alongside CBD-infused products.
Energy bar company Jambar has released a vegan Tropical Trio flavour, featuring bananas, pineapples, coconuts, gluten-free ancient grains, and walnut butter. It’s packed with 10g of protein per bar.
And in the US, the Kraft Heinz Not Company has unveiled a squeezable bottle for its NotMayo, alongside a marketing campaign targeting mayo haters.
Finance and company news
Israel’s Imagindairy – which recently earned GRAS status from the FDA for its precision-fermented whey protein in the US – has partnered with US cell programming expert Ginkgo Bioworks to develop an optimum microbe for cost-effective production of non-whey dairy proteins. The collaboration is part-funded by the joint Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation.
Swedish cultivated meat company Re:meat, meanwhile, has collaborated with solutions provider Alfa Laval to build an innovation hub for commercial-scale cultivated meat production.
Washington-based Proxy Foods, an AI tech provider for food businesses, has raised $2.3M for its recipe formulation AI solution, which enables manufacturers to solve complex flavour and nutritional challenges through recipe optimisation and new formulations.
Hong Kong-based cultivated seafood company Avant Meats is planning a fundraising round and a 30-fold capacity expansion after receiving positive response from consumers at a recent tasting event.
US vegan chicken startup Daring is witnessing a change at the top, with founder Ross McKay stepping down as CEO and moving into a chairman emeritus role.
Courtesy: Daring
In New Zealand, fellow plant-based chicken company Sunfed Meats has had its valuation slashed to zero by major investor Blackbird Ventures. Its products no longer seem to be available on Australian retail shelves, but a source confirmed to Green Queen that they’re still sold in New Zealand.
Policy, education and awards
In Northern California, the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters announced that a citizen-led petition to ban factory farms will now be up for vote, after volunteers submitted 37,000 signatures (about double what was needed). The vote is likely to be held in November, with potential implications for around two dozen concentrated animal feeding operations.
Alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute Europe has collaborated with the University of Leeds on a new PhD focused on the social and ecological impacts of a large-scale transition to alternative proteins in the UK and Europe. It’s financed by the UK’s largest public funding agency, the Economic and Social Research Council.
Fellow alt-protein advocacy group ProVeg International has launched the 2024 edition of its Kickstarting for Good incubator programme to support new organisations and impact initiatives with a focus on AI, policy change, food waste, and farming transition, among other themes.
In response to campaigning by the Open Wing Alliance, hotel operators Hilton, Louvre Hotels Group, and Meliá Hotels International have made significant strides in their cage-free commitments, including agreeing to disclose their percentages of cage-free eggs and laying out a phaseout plan.
London-based podcast PLANT CEO has partnered with Los Angeles-based streaming channel UnchainedTV, which will host the former’s podcast episodes in full on its website.
Courtesy: Fry’s Family Foods/Aardman/Netflix
Finally, UK plant-based meat brand Fry’s Family Foods‘ collaboration with animation house Aardman and Netflix to launch vegan nuggets for the Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget movie has received the Best Marketing Campaign honour at the World Food Innovation Awards.
Israeli startup Finally Foods has emerged from stealth with a pre-seed investment from The Kitchen FoodTech Hub to develop proteins from potatoes via molecular farming, starting with casein.
Established by computational biology company Evogene and The Kitchen FoodTech Hub, the investment arm of food giant Strauss Group and the Israeli Innovation Authority, Finally Foods is an AI-driven company that leverages molecular farming tech to produce animal-derived proteins from plants.
The company essentially modifies plants into bioreactors that can produce animal proteins in a sustainable and cost-effective manner, and is starting with casein, the main protein found in dairy. It’s known for its emulsifying properties, preventing water and fat from separating and lending cheese its melty and stretchy attributes.
While the amount of capital injected was undisclosed, this marks The Kitchen’s first investment into molecular farming. “The Kitchen has been investing in FoodTech and specifically in alternative proteins since 2015. Our experience shows that when it comes to protein expression and manufacturing, one technology does not fit all,” said the hub’s chief business officer, Amir Zaidman.
“Precision fermentation might be the right solution for some applications, biomass fermentation for others, and cell cultivation for yet another set of alternatives. We strongly believe that molecular farming has an important role to play in the mix of technologies that will enable a cleaner, more sustainable future for food production. We have been waiting for the right opportunity to invest in this space and when we met Finally, we felt this is it.”
Producing casein micelles through potatoes
Courtesy: AI-Generated Image via Canva
Finally Foods was co-founded by CEO Dafna Gabbay and CTO Basia J Vinocur, who was formerly the VP of R&D at Evogene. It taps into Evogene’s GeneRator AI technology to optimise its production process by enabling short R&D cycles, more efficient extractions, and accelerated go-to-market plans.
Evogene holds around a 40% stake in the company, with the rest of the ownership divided between the co-founders and The Kitchen.
To produce its casein, the company elected to use potatoes as the plant source. “It meets several key parameters that we identified to allow an efficient production, including high yield in the field and an effective protein extraction,” said Gabbay. “We believe a potato will serve as the optimal ‘bioreactor’ for a complex protein such as casein.”
She added that it was The Kitchen that identified the “unmet need” for a functional animal-free casein protein. “Our goal is to express in one plant all four sub-units,” she explained. In milk, the four kinds of casein proteins fold into a spherical structure known as a micelle, where they are suspended in a highly hydrated solution and bound together with minerals like calcium.
“But as they say, ‘perfect is the enemy of good’, so if we see down the road that a micellar protein is reached with fewer sub-units, we’ll go for it,” Gabbay said.
Described by industry think tank the Good Food Institute as the fourth pillar of the alternative protein world, molecular farming entails modifying the cells of plants – instead of microbes or animals, as is the case in cultivated proteins or precision fermentation – to enable them to replicate animal proteins, which can be harvested from leaves or other plant tissues.
It offers some key advantages over other forms of alternative protein, especially in terms of cost and scalability, given that it doesn’t need expensive bioreactors for larger manufacturing amounts. Since plants are the natural bioreactors here, this tech needs more fields for plant cultivation. “Molecular farming represents a catalyst towards global food security and a more sustainable future,” said Gabbay.
AI experience and licensed tech sets Finally Foods apart
Courtesy: Finally Foods
Finally Foods isn’t the only startup using potatoes to produce animal proteins – fellow Israeli player PoLoPo is doing the same for egg proteins. Many others – including Moolec, Nobell Foods, Mozza, Miruku, Tiamat Sciences, Bright Biotech and ORF Genetics – have identified molecular farming as a viable solution for producing sustainable analogues to animal products, with the market tipped to reach $3.5B by 2029.
Finally Foods operates as a B2B supplier, identifying itself as an “ingredient company”. “Finally is a platform technology,” explained Gabbay. “We first focus on casein, [but] haemoglobin and other proteins will follow.”
She remarked that licensing Evogene’s proprietary AI engines gives the startup a competitive advantage. “That will allow us to significantly shorten time to market, as most of the planning will be done in the lab before we get to the field,” she said. Additionally, she noted that Vinocur’s 17-year stint at Evogene is a major differentiator, “as the key to AI is not just the access to the vast data, but also the experience in what questions to ask it”.
“Finally is one of the rare cases where we see an extremely strong founding team, in Dafna and Basia, coupled with a proven technology platform based on the leading AI engine of Evogene,” said Zaidman.
Evogene CEO Ofer Haviv, meanwhile, is optimistic about the possibilities arising from his firm’s tech. “By harnessing the power of our GeneRator AI tech engine, molecular farming has the potential to revolutionise the food industry and promote healthier diets worldwide.”
Asked about the company’s five-year plan, Gabbay outlined that the team has ambitious goals. “We should have at least two proteins in the market, and should be working on others as well.”
French food tech startup La Vie has expanded its foodservice footprint via a deal with Pizza Hut France, which will see its plant-based ham be available on demand for all of the chain’s menu items for 2024.
When Pizza Hut France tweeted on Monday that it was replacing its conventional ham with La Vie’s vegan version, it felt like another April Fool’s joke. That was the consensus on the social media platform too, until the startup responded with: “It’s not a joke.”
It definitely ruffled some feathers, with one user finding the ‘joke’ not funny and saying they’ll boycott the brand, and another – presumably a ham lover – warning the pizza chain it has just lost a customer.
But there was a catch: while Pizza Hut France did switch out all its animal-derived ham with the pea protein ham, it was only doing so for one day. So if you ordered a dish with ham from the restaurant chain yesterday, you ate La Vie ham.
Courtesy: La Vie/Pizza Hut
Starting today, conventional ham is back on the menu, but La Vie’s isn’t going away anywhere, with Pizza Hut making it available as an on-demand option for all its dishes for the rest of the year. And the best part? There’s no extra cost for swapping the hams – Pizza Hut France is offering La Vie without any upcharge.
“Pizza Hut France continues to innovate and doesn’t hesitate to break new ground,” said the company’s regional CMO, Emilie Genty. “Once again, Pizza Hut France is thinking big by collaborating with La Vie, to offer a plant-based alternative to ham on all our ranges: our Pizzas, our Melts, our Pastas, and our starters!”
Jambon végétal on your Pizza Hut order
La Vie says the partnership is built on shared values of conviviality, originality, and deliciousness, and is an extension of the brand’s successful foodservice partnerships. Its flagship bacon rashers and lardons have been a permanent fixture on Burger King menus since May 2022, and the ham was featured in a plant-based version of the iconic jambon beurre by vegan bakery Land&Monkeys.
But this marks the first time La Vie has teamed up with a pizza chain, allowing customers from across the dietary spectrum – vegans, vegetarians, flexitarians and meat-eaters – to integrate a plant-based meat analogue into their pizza orders. Pizza is highly popular in France, one of the leaders in terms of per capita consumption. In fact, in 2015, it tied with the US as the largest pizza consumer in the world.
La Vie’s products have already been available at over 4,600 retail stores and 3,000 restaurants across Europe, and its entry into Pizza Hut’s 126 stores in France continues its mission of a responsible food system transformation. It is already featured as default on menu items like Croq-Monsieur Melts and garlic breads, and pastas, as well as the Queen, Texan BBQ, Jambon Beurre (ham and cheese), and yes, even Hawaiian pizzas.
Courtesy: La Vie/Pizza Hut
Its CMO Romain Jolivet cites a 2024 YouGov survey that revealed one in five French youngsters don’t eat meat, chiefly due to ethical and environmental reasons. “Fast food, being a pillar of the dietary habits of this generation, has already started to make the shift,” he said. “The evidence is with Burger King’s veggie offer representing 20% of sales, but that’s not the case in the pizza sector.”
He added: “That’s why we decided to accelerate the movement in our mission to convince the French to adopt a plant-based diet, while fully preserving gustatory pleasure, with our products rich in plant proteins and made in France, with Pizza Hut France taking the bet to offer all its ham pizzas with the La Vie plant-based alternative to meet this growing demand.”
La Vie originally launched its vegan ham in September, on the back of selling 2.5 million SKUs in the previous 18 months. What stood out immediately was the ingredient list, which comprised just seven ingredients: pea protein (making up 90% of the total composition), soy protein, natural flavourings, radish juice concentrate, salt, acidity regulator (potassium acetate) and vegan lactic acid.
Fast-growing La Vie aids Pizza Hut’s much-needed vegan expansion
The vegan ham is a nutritional powerhouse, with one serving offering 19.5g of protein and only 0.7 grams of saturated fat – compared to 21g of protein and 1g of saturated fat for the country’s market-leading conventional ham. This will appeal to French consumers, for whom, health is the main purchasing driver for plant-based meat alternatives, according to a large pan-European survey last year, where 51% said it was key.
But an even bigger motivation is the flavour, important to 52% of French consumers. Their concerns will be eased by the (favourable) controversy La Vie has attracted – it was the recipient of a cease-and-desist letter by the pork lobby, which accused it of unfair competition, stating that its plant-based bacon lardons were too similar to their conventional counterparts.
The same poll also suggested that 57% of French consumers reduced their consumption of meat last year. It came against the backdrop of France’s factory farming push and anti-vegan labelling law, which has prohibited plant-based companies from using 21 words like ‘steak’ or ‘beef’, as well as 120 other terms such as ‘cooked fillet’ or ‘poultry’, on product packaging.
However, a coalition of businesses led by vegan whole-cut chicken maker Umiami filed an urgent suspension request in late March asking for the decree to be held back, which is set to come into effect within the next few weeks if there are no responses from the government or the courts. La Vie is part of this group.
Courtesy: Pizza Hut
The Natalie Portman-backed startup has weathered the plant-based meat storm – whether it’s sales declines, negative media coverage or a venture capital drain. It completed an oversubscribed €2M crowdfunding round last September, following a record-breaking €25M in Series A round in January 2022. And in the first half of 2023, it witnessed a staggering 379% growth compared to the same period in 2022.
Pizza Hut, meanwhile, has expanded its growing vegan footprint internationally by incorporating La Vie’s ham into its menu. The chain uses Beyond Meat’s products and offers Violife’s vegan cheese in the UK, for example (the latter is also available in Germany), and introduced vegan wings in its Australia outposts last year.
That said, an analysis of fast-food menus in nine countries by ProVeg International found that plant-based menu items represent just 8% of Pizza Hut’s overall range, and 5.2% of its mains, placing it fourth on the vegan-friendly list of the Big Five fast-food chains. However, the report did note that the pizza chain is making an effort to offer vegan options, adding that integrating them into the general menu will likely appeal to a wider range of customers, including flexitarians and omnivores.
Offering La Vie’s ham on its dishes is one big step in that direction.
Finnish precision fermentation startup Onego Bio has closed a $40M Series A funding round to commercialise its animal-free egg protein, Bioalbumen. It expects to obtain self-affirmed GRAS status in the US soon, paving the way for its market entry in North America.
The investment round was led by Japanese-Finnish VC firm NordicNinja, with participation from Tesi, EIT Food, and existing investors Agronomics, Maki.vc, Holdix and Turret (among others). It also includes $10M non-dilutive financing from the government innovation organisation Business Finland.
One of the largest Series A rounds in the Nordics, it brings the company’s total investment to $56M. The funding will be used to fuel Onego Bio’s commercialisation strategy for North America, where it is expecting regulatory clearance for its animal-free Bioalbumen protein soon.
“Egg protein remains one of nature’s most perfect foods; this single ingredient supplies more than 20 different functional benefits from aeration to emulsification and gelation,” said co-founder and CEO Maija Itkonen, who founded the startup with CTO Christopher Landowski in 2022 as a spinoff from the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland. “While it may sound scientific, the value is in our mouths every day with velvety cake structures, silky-smooth mayonnaises, crispy nugget batterings, or those chewy-fluffy nougat fillings, just to mention few.”
How Onego Bio makes its Bioalbumen egg protein
Courtesy: Onego Bio
Onego Bio uses a fungal strain called Trichoderma reesei – the same microbe used by Californian precision fermentation pioneer Perfect Day for its whey protein – to create a bioidentical version of ovalbumin, the major protein found in egg whites (making up about 54% of the protein content).
The company introduced the genetic blueprint of ovalbumin to the fungi cells through a scientific database that acts like a library, which enables them to produce egg proteins instead of their own. The company feeds the microbes on sugar in a process similar to beer brewing, except the end result is not alcohol, of course. The fungus is either starved with little food or allowed to “gorge on glucose” depending on the stage of the production process – essentially, once it’s fed plenty of glucose and then starved off it, the fungus starts sweating proteins.
The resulting Bioovalbumin is then placed into a fermentation tank with water and fungal biomass. The latter is separated to procure a liquid containing the egg protein, which is then dried into a powder. Onego Bio’s patented tech can produce 120g of protein per litre in 250,000-litre fermentation vessels, which the startup says allows it to reach close to price parity with conventional egg proteins.
Its Bioalbumin is a nutritionally complete protein, containing all essential amino acids and the highest possible protein digestibility score, delivering over 90g of protein per 100g of egg white. There are environmental benefits attached to this as well, with the company’s protein requiring 95% less land and generating 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than chicken eggs. It is also working on alternative feedstocks to eliminate its reliance on corn sugar and grasslands and further lower its climate footprint.
“Eggs are an essential part of food businesses, but with the egg market constantly fluctuating due to avian flu and increased demand for cage-free, manufacturers are challenged to find a viable replacement with a consistent, reliable, and safe supply of high-quality protein at an accessible price,” said Agronomics co-founder and executive chairman Jim Mellon. “A long-term sustainable solution for chicken eggs is needed.”
Onego Bio expects US regulatory approval soon
A mockup of Onego Bio’s industrial-scale manufacturing facility | Courtesy: Onego Bio
Onego Bio will use the Series A capital to accelerate its go-to-market strategy for North America, which includes scaling up to industrial production levels and expanding its US commercial team. As a precision fermentation startup, its product will need safety approval from the US FDA – the company says it’s on track to receive self-affirmed Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status in the country this year, and expected a ‘no further questions’ letter from the regulator in 2025.
So far, only California’s The Every Co has secured FDA approval for precision-fermented egg proteins in the US – the startup recently secured a third ‘no questions letter’ for expanded applications of its egg white protein, made from Komagataella phaffii. (Germany’s Formo is the only other company working in this space, with its precision-fermented egg alternative set to launch later this year).
But Onego Bio’s forthcoming self-affirmed GRAS status would join a fast-growing list of regulatory breakthroughs for the US precision fermentation sector – Vivici, New Culture, Oobli and Imagindairy have all announced GRAS (whether self-affirmed or via an FDA letter) status this year alone.
To facilitate its market entry, Onego Bio is working with co-manufacturers and finalising its in-house production plans as well. This approach involves securing offtake agreements and obtaining non-dilutive funding for the construction of its first manufacturing unit, which would boost a two-million-litre fermentation capacity. This will effectively replace an egg farm with six million laying hens.
Its animal-free egg protein is said to have a neutral flavour and superior functional properties, making it an ideal industrial ingredient for replacing eggs and enhancing the taste and texture of a wide range of food applications. The startup has already teamed up with over 25 CPG companies, which are incorporating Bioalbumen into products like baked goods, confectionery, snacks, sauces, pastas, and meat analogues, among others.
“Onego Bio is taking all the right steps to commercialise in record time,” said Nordic Ninja managing partner Tomosaku Sohara. “They are a next-generation precision fermentation company, with a clear path to industrialization, go-to-market, and profitability. With technology that is designed to scale and such a strong team, they really stand out.”
While Onego Bio is targeting North America as its first point of entry due to an easier regulatory landscape, it eventually aims to expand into South America, Asia and Europe too. “By repurposing a well-established technology from the enzyme industry for food protein production, they are well-positioned to scale to the massive volumes needed to futureproof the supply of the world’s most versatile and popular food protein,” noted Mellon.
Americans are willing to try novel proteins – including those that are plant-based, fermented or fungi-derived – with more than half happy to pay more for them than animal proteins, according to a new survey, which shines light on the importance of health in the US.
Lately, a lot of the messaging from plant-based brands has been centred around health. Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat – two of the industry’s giants – have rejigged their marketing strategies to focus on nutrition, just as Unilever is hoping to capitalise on the Ozempic boom by doubling down on gut health with its vegan portfolio.
These companies are playing to consumers’ demands, with one poll from last year suggesting that health is the main factor behind Americans eating meatless diets, after six in 10 cited it. In a post-pandemic world, nutrition is top of mind of consumers, and this can be evidenced in a new survey by McKinsey, which gauged 1,517 Americans’ opinions on novel proteins.
The poll found that a majority of Americans are open to trying new ingredients and over half are willing to pay more for them. But the way they respond to labels, and the products they really are happy to shell out more for, exhibit the importance of health in their food purchasing decisions.
McKinsey identified 12 novel protein categories and classed them into three groups for the survey. Animal-free bioidentical products comprised precision-fermented dairy proteins, collagen and eggs; biomass proteins consisted of prebiotic, cultured, postbiotic, fermented, microbial and gas-fed ingredients, and fungal proteins included nutritional fungi protein, mycelium protein and mycoprotein.
The research also looked into plant-based ingredients like almond, oat, chickpea, soy, pea and barley proteins, but they were not the main focus, as they’re already established in the market
Over half of consumers willing to try novel proteins
Courtesy: McKinsey
Depending on the ingredient, between 49-67% of consumers are willing to try food or drinks that contain novel proteins, with animal-free dairy and biomass-fermented prebiotic proteins garnering the most support. In fact, 63% of respondents are open to trying precision-fermented products, and 56% said the same for biomass fermentation. This drops to 49% for fungal proteins, making up an average of 56% acceptance across the three categories.
In contrast, 77% are happy to give products with plant proteins a go, with almond and oat proteins being the most popular (82% each), followed by chickpea protein (77%), which trumped soy (75%) and pea (74%).
On average, 28% of respondents are more willing to try a novel ingredient if it makes the product healthier, with those aged 18 and above showcasing the highest degree of importance for health. For older demographics, however, taste is the most crucial aspect for acceptance of these ingredients. But unwillingness to try such products stems from a lack of awareness or questions about how these are made, with taste, naturalness and price also key. People who make over $100,000 a year expressed greater doubt (33%) about the long-term health effects.
Sustainability and health speak louder than ‘vegan’
Courtesy: McKinsey
There has been tons of research about the best way to label vegan food on product packaging, with a dislike of the word ‘vegan’ being apparent globally. McKinsey found that familiar terms and well-understood nutritional statements like ‘good or complete source of protein’ or ‘antibiotic- and hormone-free) are the most compelling. ‘Sustainably produced’ is similarly impactful.
But while consumers understand words like ‘vegan’, ‘vegetarian’ and ‘plant-based’ well, these don’t significantly drive the trial of products. Even less effective are terms that indicate production methods, such as ‘bioengineered’, ‘made with biotechnology’ or ‘next-gen’, which highlights the neophobia associated with food tech.
Courtesy: McKinsey
The survey also tested various names that could represent novel product aisles or sections in supermarkets. While ‘plant-based’ was ranked top by the highest number of Americans (32%), the most popular term overall was ‘sustainably made’ (ranking in the top three for 61% of respondents, versus 51% for ‘plant-based’. McKinsey earmarked this and ‘consciously made’ (in the top three for 51%) as category names to consider, while retailers should stay away from terms like ‘fermented’ or ‘fungi’.
Americans would pay more for novel proteins – lunch and snacking are key
Courtesy: McKinsey
Respondents displayed much greater openness to try novel foods at lunch (46%) or in on-the-go snacks (55%) than breakfast (39%) or dinner (32%). McKinsey suggests that product development may benefit from a spotlight on the former two, with a lower focus on breakfast, and potentially avoiding centreplate dinner proteins.
Courtesy: McKinsey
And in what may come as a surprise to some, more than half of consumers are happy to pay more for products whose animal-derived counterparts cost less than $2. For nutritional beverages like protein shakes, 58% are willing to pay between 25% and four times more, which rises to 59% for burger patties, and 64% for protein bars. Respondents were less open to shelling out more for products like ice creams, sandwiches or cookies.
In terms of channel, they were more receptive to paying higher for retail and CPG products than in foodservice settings, which is interesting given that out-of-home consumption has been a crucial driver for meat analogue consumption. People’s willingness to pay for novel proteins didn’t vary significantly across ingredient types, however.
Key takeaways for novel protein producers
Courtesy: Perfect Day
McKinsey highlights that many of the novel proteins it polled Americans about haven’t been commercialised yet, but added that there are several considerations for companies and investors in this space.
First, investing in consumer education is vital, with fewer than half aware of novel ingredients, and uncertainty about production being the largest barrier to their adoption. The survey found that people are more likely to try products if they’re recommended by professionals like doctors or nutritionists (44%), or family and friends (27%).
The importance of the health-environment-taste trifecta cannot be understated either, with respondents feeling novel proteins should be healthier than conventional animal sources, and more likely to eat those that are. Plus, those that have a comparable flavour or desirable alternative to taste and texture can increase adoption.
Next, innovation should prioritise the end application and channel. If companies want more consumers to dig into novel proteins, they should consider launching products for lunch, snacking or breakfast, and blend familiar terminology like ‘a good source of protein’ with emerging language such as ‘sustainably made’.
Finally, despite varying levels of awareness and trial, there wasn’t a significant gap in willingness to pay based on ingredient type. Instead, this was more linked to the category than the type of protein. This signalled that the underlying technology might not be too tall a hurdle, even if it’s new to human consumption.
Korean food giant CJ CheilJedang has introduced its plant-based dumplings to grocery stores inside US military bases in South Korea, with plans to extend the range and expand in other countries too.
Plant-based options for US military personnel are growing, with CJ CheilJedang now offering its vegan Bibigo dumplings at grocery stores in four United States Forces Korea (USFK) bases in South Korea.
On Sunday, the company launched its Giant Dumpling product range under the Bibigo brand in original, japchae and kimchi flavours, following a three-day tasting event at the USFK. While the military declined to comment on the exact bases that stock the products, it confirmed that each pack was priced at $6.43, according to The Korea Times.
The ready-to-heat dumplings contain a mix of vegetables, wheat gluten and soy protein, and take only about seven minutes to prepare. The company’s plant protein contains an ingredient called TasteNrich, which helps add a rich umami flavour to products like meat analogues, and is produced in a dedicated $50M facility in Indonesia.
According to the company, one soldier who tasted the japchae dumplings remarked: “This is my first time trying plant-based food, and it tastes just as good as the regular dumpling products I used to eat.”
The development enables CJ CheilJedang – which is South Korea’s largest food company – to secure a new distribution channel, following a year in which sales of Bibigo’s vegan dumplings doubled year-on-year. In 2022, the brand’s overall sales totalled $8.2B.
CJ CheilJedang set to expand plant-based options for US military
Courtesy: CJ CheilJedang
In South Korea, food companies are only allowed to sell US-grown meat inside USFK bases, which means they’re forced to import from the US to meet military regulations. So until now, its shipments to the USFK were solely dependent on Cj CheilJedang’s US subsidiary, Schwan’s Company. But with the introduction of the vegan Bibigo dumplings, the company has gained more flexibility in this matter.
“The criteria for opening a grocery store in a US military base are very strict compared to general export channels, so we put in a year of effort, including tasting sessions and inspections of manufacturing plants,”
“Entering the market at USFK bases is much harder than other local markets here because of the American authority’s strict standards for products,” said Lee Jeong-chan, plant-based food manager at CJ CheilJedang. “We’ve invested the past year for this marketing to work out, holding tasting events for Americans and inviting them to our manufacturing plants.”
He added: “We plan to continuously secure a diverse customer base in line with the expanding trends of health and environmental friendliness.”
The company aims to expand its USFK offerings with rice balls and frozen gimbaps, and aims to launch its plant-based foods at US military bases in other countries as well, including Japan and Guam.
CJ CheilJedang has previously earmarked plant-based food as its “growth engine”, targeting ₩200B ($152M) in sales in the sector by 2025. “As these three trends – health and wellness, sustainability, and animal welfare – merge together, plant-based is becoming a global mega-trend. We project the global plant-based food market to grow up to ₩35T [about $26B] in the next 10 years,” a company representative said during a press conference in 2022.
This is the second instance of a plant-based company working with the US military to increase vegan options for service members. In February, Californian giant Impossible Foods – whose products have been available at various military operations for a few years now – announced it was working with the US Army Central, which coordinates foodservice at an army-wide level, to serve its vegan beef and burgers in military dining facilities in North Africa, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia.
Is there demand for vegan food among US troops?
Courtesy: US Army
In July 2022, the US House of Representatives passed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, one of whose requirements was that the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) produce a report on plant-based Meals, Ready-to-Eat (MREs), which are dehydrated field rations for troops in the US. The study was meant to determine the demand for vegan MREs among troops, including cost and feasibility analysis to produce at least two plant-based MREs, service member demand, and an implementation plan. (The results aren’t public yet.)
MREs have historically been meat-heavy, with the first vegetarian meals introduced only in 1986. The current menu of 24 dishes only contains four meatless options. “There may have been a vegetarian entree that was also vegan. “To date, there has been no military service requirement for vegan MREs,” the DLA told the Guardian in 2019.
But a 2022 Mercy for Animals survey of 226 American troops found that 3.5% are vegan, and 42% either didn’t eat meat, were flexitarian, or trying to decrease their animal product intake. The majority (81%) would pick climate-friendly MREs, and the same number feel the military should provide plant-based MREs – in fact, 63% suggested they’d choose a vegan MRE over a meat-based meal.
Additionally, 70% said they’d climate-friendly food options if available, and 63% believed plant-based foods are more sustainable than animal-derived foods. Many also felt vegan food is healthier (52%) and provides more energy (51%) too.
And in 2019, one vegan soldier successfully campaigned to include a plant-based main at every meal in a US Army dining facility. Given the army’s influence over wider food culture, well-known names like CJ CheilJedang and Impossible Foods joining its food offering will only serve to grow the footprint of plant-based foods in this sector.
In response to campaigning by Dutch animal rights group Wakker Dier, seven brands have agreed to make at least 50% of the recipes on food packaging vegan or vegetarian.
Seven CPG brands have agreed to increase plant-based and vegetarian visibility on-pack in the Netherlands, accepting animal advocacy group Wakker Dier’s request to make at least half of the recipes on product packaging meatless.
Conimex, Fairtrade Original, Jumbo, Knorr, Koh Tai, Patak’s and Plus will all make the adjustment, while Grand’Italia (with 48% of on-pack recipes free from meat and fish) and Lassie (53%) already do so.
“These brands inspire consumers and show that you don’t have to cook meat the old-fashioned way every day,” Collin Molenaar, campaigner at Wakker Dier, said. “Packages are ideally intended to inspire consumers with simple dishes. And so they can also help people to choose plant-based more often.”
Meanwhile, Albert Heijn and Maggi have plans to add plant-based tips to recipes, but haven’t said they’ll remove meat from half of them. And according to Wakker Dier, Honig (80% of whose packaging recipes are not suitable for vegetarians) is the only brand that hasn’t promised a shift.
On-pack recipes drive meat overconsumption
Courtesy: Wakker Dier
Currently, over 80% of all recipes on packaging and bags recommend meat or fish, according to an analysis of 657 recipes on product packaging by Wakker Dier. In fact, none of Maggi’s recipes are vegetarian, while only 6% of Patak’s recipes don’t feature meat or seafood. In fact, apart from Grand’Italia and Lassie, only Jumbo has more than 20% of recipes that are suitable for meat-free consumers, and even this is by a small margin (21%).
Given that many consumers follow back-of-the-box recipes, this encourages the overconsumption of meat. In fact, 29% of the recipes with red meat contain a larger amount than what’s recommended by the national dietary guidelines. Wakker Dier notes how the Health Council of the Netherlands recommends eating a diet where 60% of a person’s protein consumption comes from plant-based sources.
The Dutch eat 1.8 million kgs of meat every day, which makes up 60% of their diet. And while last year, 49% of consumers in the country reported reducing their meat consumption from the year before, government data revealed that only 5.5% are vegetarian or vegan. But on the flip side, as of last June, retail sales of meat had fallen for nine consecutive quarters in the Netherlands, down by 13% from 2019.
And analysis in 2022 from the Good Food Institute revealed that the Netherlands is the sixth-largest market in terms of plant-based sales, but its residents have the highest per capita consumption rates of plant-based foods.
Wakker Dier’s 60-40 plant-based campaign
Courtesy: Wakker Dier
One of Wakker Dier’s campaign goals is to have at least 60% of the proteins sold by food vendors in the country be plant-based by 2030, and ensure that the total amount of protein sold won’t increase. This target has been embraced by nine supermarkets and 16 caterers, including Albert Heijn, Lidl, Aldi, Jumbo, Compass Group, Van Leeuwen Catering and Albron.
These companies have pledged towards 50% plant-based proteins by 2025 – and 60% by the end of the decade – agreeing to monitor and publicly report their sales’ plant-animal ratio. “These caterers together make a huge impact for the animals,” Molenaar said in December. “If people experience how tasty and easy it is to eat fewer animals, they can also continue that good habit at home.”
Currently, Aldi has the lowest share of meat alternatives (12%), while Albert Heijn has the highest (36%). The latter ranks second in terms of physical shelf space for plant-based products, which make up 24% of its area, behind only Jumbo (25%). In fact, Jumbo made headlines earlier this month after announcing it will cease all meat promotions in its stores from May, following intense criticism by animal rights groups, including Wakker Dier.
Now, its campaign has effected another change, with Fairtrade Original, Jumbo, Knorr, Koh Tai, Patak’s and Plus all promising to introduce an even split between meat and meatless in on-pack recipes by 2025, and Conimex saying it will do so by 2026.
In other alternative protein news, the Dutch government recently became the first EU nation to develop a framework to allow public tasting events of cultivated meat. Speaking at an EU Agrifish Council meeting, its food quality and agriculture minister Piet Adema said: “We believe that it is important to support innovations that create production methods for animal proteins complementary to, and not as a substitute to, conventional sustainable production.”
As molecular farming gains steam as an alternative protein pillar, Israel’s PoLoPo joins the party with a tech platform that can transform potatoes into protein-producing factories, starting with egg proteins.
Your egg and potato hash could soon be a potato and potato hash. Emerging from stealth this week, Israeli food tech startup PoLoPo is using molecular farming technology to increase the native protein content in potatoes, and produce the main protein found in chicken eggs.
The company has unveiled its SuperAA platform, which it describes as the first step towards producing proteins from common plant crops. This is currently deployed at greenhouse scale, and is capable of generating patatin and ovalbumin via proprietary metabolic engineering techniques.
Molecular farming, which has been described by industry think tank the Good Food Institute as the fourth pillar of the alternative protein world, uses genetic engineering methods to biohack plants and produce functional ingredients and nutrients.
“The SuperAA platform uses plants as living factories, and leverages their natural productivity and storage organs to grow proteins that are identical to protein derived from a chicken’s egg,” said PoLoPo CEO Maya Sapir-Mir, who co-founded the startup with CTO Raya Liberman-Aloni in 2022.
How PoLoPo turns potatoes into egg proteins
Courtesy: PoLoPo
PoLoPo’s Super AA platform grows target amino acids within a potato’s tuber, which are harvested when they reach sufficient size. The protein is then extracted and dried into a powder that can be integrated into existing food processing lines and formulations.
Essentially, the startup inserts a DNA sequence into the potato to teach it to produce an egg protein that is fully functional, nutritionally equivalent and chemically identical to chicken eggs, but without any animal input. The latter is what sets it apart from other alternative egg products. While PoLoPo’s potato-derived egg proteins are vegan, unlike its plant-based competitors on the market, they’re not suitable for people with egg allergies.
The company claims the product has undergone rigorous testing and meets all the necessary food safety standards, deeming it safe for consumption after quality control assessments.
PoLoPo began with potatoes due to their resilience in diverse climates, low growth costs, short maturation time, relatively large storage capacity (in the form of tubers), high yields, and compatibility with existing technologies. Strategically, it is an efficient and sustainable ingredient that offers attractive financial opportunities for established agrifood producers, which will allow PoLoPo to chart a cost-effective course towards scaling its Super AA system.
Patatin is a group of native proteins found in potatoes, and PoLoPo’s powdered version can be used as an allergen-free protein for a host of applications, including plant-based meat and dairy, baked goods, cereals, snacks, beverages, sports nutrition and nutraceuticals. Additionally, it can improve food security in regions hit by malnutrition.
Molecular farming on the rise
Courtesy: PoLoPo
Molecular farming differs from cell cultivation and precision fermentation in that it modifies plant cells – not microbes or animal cells – so they can replicate animal proteins, which can be harvested from leaves or other plant tissues. It’s a process that occurs when microorganisms infect plants, transferring some genes in the process – scientists use similar methods to give plants new instructions to create proteins.
It offers some key advantages over other forms of alternative protein, especially in terms of cost and scalability, given that it doesn’t require bioreactors to produce ingredients – the plants themselves are the bioreactors in this case. Many companies – such as Moolec, Nobell Foods, Mozza, Miruku, Tiamat Sciences, Bright Biotech and ORF Genetics – have identified it as a viable and sustainable solution for producing planet-friendly analogues to animal products, and research suggests it’s a market that could be worth $3.5B by 2029.
“The high-scale production of proteins in plants via molecular farming has the potential to economically transform not only potato farming and processing, but broader agriculture and agtech, for a more resilient and sustainable food system,” explained Sapir-Mir, whose company closed a $2.3M pre-seed investment round last year.
PoLoPo’s proteins will soon be available to food manufacturers for testing. They will appeal to companies looking to diversify their portfolio, make their products more allergy-friendly, and remove their reliance on industrial farming – in the US alone, most (if not all) egg-laying hens are part of concentrated animal feeding operations. Plus, eggs themselves have gone through supply chain issues over the last few years, with avian flu leading to shortages and subsequent price hikes.
Ovalbumin, meanwhile, is a protein widely used in the CPG sector, given its textural and stabilisation characteristics. It also enhances nutritional value and increases the shelf life of products, and is set to hit $36B in market value by 2032.
Other companies working with egg alternatives include Just Egg (which represents 99% of all sales in the US vegan egg market), Yo Egg, Hodo, Simply Eggless, WunderEggs, Oggs, Crackd, Perfeggt, Neggst, and Neat Egg, among others, while The Every Co, Onego Bio and Formo employ precision fermentation.
Ugandan women-led company Fiber Foods is using a food that often goes to waste, and turning it into an ingredient that can solve plant-based and blended meat’s texture problems, servicing consumers’ increased fibre needs, and supporting local farmers via value chains.
An ingredient that can produce better meat analogues, help reduce meat consumption via more appetising blended meat products, provide a whole-food, fibre-packed option to increasingly health-conscious consumers, and boost the side income of local farmers through agricultural value chains. Sound intriguing?
That’s exactly what Fiber Foods is doing. A female-led business based in Uganda, the company is championing jackfruit as an ingredient that can address multiple pain points in the food system: whether that’s our overconsumption of meat, concerns surrounding meat alternatives, or food insecurity.
Jackfruit has already been adopted as an alternative protein solution by many producers, including Jack & Annie’s, Upton’s Naturals, Karana, Jack & Bry, and The Jackfruit Company. But Fiber Foods is approaching the fruit in a novel approach, opting to dehydrate it and offering it as an ingredient called PrimeJack, which comes in multiple shapes and sizes for manufacturers to use jackfruit as an ingredient in plant-based or blended meat applications.
“We started the company to create opportunities for women and girls in agro-processing,” says co-founder Ineke Aquarius. “[We do this] by selecting a crop that was already growing in the traditional agroforests of smallholder farmers and was not yet commercialised, which means it is the domain of women.”
She notes that while living in Uganda, she and her co-founder Inez van Oord “saw a lot of Jackfruit going to waste”, just as it appeared in more and more vegan applications in Europe. While jackfruit trees are “true climate champions” in smallholder agroforests, the lack of a market meant these were being cut down. “The fact that the trees were already there, but without commercial value, made it a ‘female crop’, which gave us the opportunity to work with women,” she says.
A fibre-packed product for meat analogues
Courtesy: Fiber Foods
The company developed its patent-pending tech for PrimeJack over three years, turning young fruit into an ingredient that can be produced on a large scale. It has established a production line, lab and research time in East Africa, to boost growing, harvesting and processing efficiencies for jackfruit. Meanwhile, it has a lab in the Netherlands, which is responsible for designing new applications and ingredients using PrimeJack.
Aquarius explains that the company decided to dehydrate jackfruit for sustainability reasons, reducing the volume of the product by 90%, which drastically cuts transportation emissions. “We found various other advantages,” she adds. “PrimeJack absorbs flavours in the rehydration process up to the core of the fibre, has a long shelf life and can be shipped in normal sea containers, and is not kept in brine like the pasteurised jackfruit and has therefore no sour off taste and is easier to apply in an industrial setting.”
The product will also appeal to food producers looking to improve their Nutri-Score. While jackfruit itself is low on protein (the rehydrated formulation has 1.7g per 100g), the real benefit is the fibre content, which is 8.1g per 100g once rehydrated. Fibre is an increasingly important nutrient for people, with fibre-rich diets linked with a lower risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, strokes, high cholesterol and heart disease. Plus, it regulates incretin, a hormone described as our body’s “natural Ozempic”, given it boosts GLP-1 to control appetite and metabolism – this makes fibre-packed foods a priority in the booming gut health era.
Animal products like meat, meanwhile, don’t contain any fibre, contributing to the lack of fibre in our diets. To tackle that problem, Fiber Foods is targeting the alternative protein space, offering PrimeJack for both vegan and blended meat (which combine conventional meat with plant-based ingredients) products.
“In plant-based meat formulations, we have developed products that consist of up to 70% rehydrated PrimeJack,” says Aquarius. “However, the market for such products is smaller,” she adds. “In blended meat, up to 30% of the meat can be replaced by 4% PrimeJack, and the rest is water.”
Jackfruit makes for better blended and plant-based meat
Courtesy: Fiber Foods
Blended applications enable a product that is “lower cost with better nutrition and footprint”, according to the company. To illustrate this, Fiber Foods explains how a 100% beef burger has more fat (including saturated fat) and sodium than a 70% blended burger, which has 1.7g of fibre versus none for the former. In terms of protein, the conventional burger has 25g per serving, while one blended with PrimeJack contains 19g.
The ingredient has a natural flavour too, meaning it wouldn’t take away from the taste aspect of meat, which is the most important consumption driver for consumers. “The advantage of having no flavour or taste, but a high absorption potential, is that the food developer can add any flavour they desire,” says Aquarius. She reveals this could also work with cultivated meat in hybrid applications. “But the quickest win is to replace 20-30% meat for PrimeJack and reduce price, footprint and improve Nutri-Score without changing the recipe.”
All this is why Fiber Foods secured financing from agrifood tech investment fund FoodSparks, which was launched by PeakBridge and EIT Food, in January. “Fiber Foods has a strong value proposition to improve the healthiness, Nutri-Score and sustainability of existing meat alternatives and hybrid meats,” says Thomas van den Boezem, principal at PeakBridge. “Their unique product and process also make a strong business case, backed by an experienced and inspiring founding team, with a high understanding of customer needs.”
He adds that as an ingredient, jackfruit ticks all the boxes: no bad taste, low price, fictional, and sustainable. “With Fiber Foods’ unique process, jackfruit addresses a number of key problems in existing meat alternatives and hybrid meats. Jackfruit fibres provide structural benefits to the end product, with zero negative taste impact,” he explains. “The health benefits are substantial, since it’s fibre-rich, and allergen and cholesterol-free. Plus, jackfruit trees are abundant and can be accessed with existing infrastructure, making the ingredient a highly affordable option for plant-based meat alternatives.”
Fiber Foods has just completed a life-cycle assessment, which revealed that its current production line emits 0.34kg of carbon per kg of rehydrated PrimeJack – compared to 15-30kg and 5-12kg for the same amount of beef or pork, respectively, as well as 0.7kg for Quorn’s mycoprotein. “Based on our LCA results, we are developing a plan to further lower our footprint to move to net zero in the new factory that we are establishing,” says Aquarius.
To make PrimeJack, the company peels its jackfruit first – research has shown that about 70-80% of a jackfruit consists of waste and byproducts. The peel also makes up 30% of the Fiber Foods’ jackfruit waste, one of its biggest sources of emissions. But it leaves no traces of the product in its processing hubs, having partnered with Ugandan insect protein producer Proteen.
Fiber Foods’ mission as a social enterprise
Courtesy: Fiber Foods
Beyond the nutrition and climate aspects, the social element of Fiber Foods is what really stands out. As a women-led company, its focus has always been to champion women’s rights and provide them with economic opportunities. The company has been building agricultural value chains to help smallholder farmers in Uganda and Kenya with an additional source of income.
These value chains allow farmers to earn a side income out of crops that still need to be commercialised, but maintain the regenerative balance in their farms, alongside cash crops like coffee, cacao and vanilla. The company is now developing a second value chain through oysternuts, and says it’s contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goals 1, 5, 8 and 12 through fair prices for farmers, gender-sensitive value chains, economic growth for the agriculture sector, and promoting sustainable food systems.
Fiber Foods currently has 3,000 farmers in its value chain, with 30% of them being women. By next year, it hopes to double the number of smallholders in its system to 6,000, with at least half of them being women. The startup has further created an ESG tool to trace its ingredient from farm to fork. “We have developed a traceability tool that works in the context of our farmers, in a multi-cropping food system both off- and online. The farmer data is connected to another tool, ISO2HANDLE, to link the jackfruit all the way to the consumer,” notes Aquarius.
“The traceability aspect is extremely important: applying regenerative agriculture principles and high ethical sourcing standards to produce their dehydrated jackfruit in Uganda,” says van den Boezem.
Aquarius says over 10 products containing PrimeJack made by its B2B partners have already been approved (or are in the process) to appear in big retailers this year. It is now preparing a large-scale production of blended meat products for retail and – as she ascribed to above – building a new dedicated jackfruit facility in a joint venture with its current production partner.
Despite all that, the social mission still remains high on its priority list. “Jackfruit grows year-round and provides farming families with a reliable side income, besides their seasonal cash crops like coffee or vanilla that are volatile and affected by climate change,” Aquarius says. “By processing the jackfruit in Uganda and Kenya, close to the source, job opportunities are created for mostly young women.”
Indonesian plant-based company Green Rebel will grace supermarket aisles in the Philippines with its shelf-stable and frozen ready meals via a partnership with Filipino condiment manufacturer and distributor NutriAsia.
Filipinos will soon be able to buy ready-to-cook vegan rendang, fried chicken, ribs and steaks in supermarkets, with Indonesian plant-based meat pioneer Green Rebel announcing its launch into the country through a collaboration with Manila-based condiment and sauce giant NutriAsia.
The development follows a consumer pilot conducted by the Indonesian brand last year, where it says it received “overwhelmingly positive responses” on its steak, rendang and crispy fried chicken products, which were sold online on e-commerce platforms in the Philippines.
“Crafting delicious, sustainable food isn’t just our passion; it’s our commitment to redefining the future of dining,” said Green Rebel co-founder and CEO Helga Angelina. “Every dish we create at Green Rebel is a testament to our belief that flavour, and sustainability go hand in hand, offering a tantalizing glimpse into a world where every meal nourishes both body and planet.”
Green Rebel taps into NutriAsia’s vast network
Courtesy: Green Rebel
The announcement was made at a launch event titled Dare to be Limeatless, which was attended by company executives, influencers and media personalities. It featured Green Rebel co-founder and R&D director Max Mandias showcasing the versatility and functionality of the company’s plant-based whole cuts.
The brand’s products are already available in over 1,200 foodservice locations and more than 300 retail stores across Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam, with the Philippines and Malaysia the latest to join that list. It has demonstrated its pedigree by establishing landmark partnerships with Starbucks, AirAsia, Tous Le Jours, NTUC FairPrice and Annam Gourmet.
The company says its products need 80% less energy and 67% less water than animal-derived meat, and have reduced 48,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions in the last two years – that’s equivalent to removing 1,100 cars from roads for an entire year. Its offerings are geared towards busy customers, with the ready-to-cook nature meaning they take less than 10 minutes to prepare, which can be done via a bunch of cooking methods, including high-moisture hotpots, steaming, stir-frying, wok cooking, and grilling.
These products leverage its proprietary Rebel Emulsion Technology, which helps recreate the mouthfeel of meat via an emulsion of coconut oil, water and natural plant-based seasonings. This allows the meat analogues to absorb deep flavours and marination, while presenting with the distinctive taste, aroma, and juiciness associated with animal protein.
So its link-up with NutriAsia, which is the country’s largest producer of condiments and sauces, makes sense. “We see a great synergy with NutriAsia as they have an extensive distribution network and complementary product range,” Angelina told Green Queen. “NutriAsia is the leading sauce and condiment manufacturer in the Philippines, while Green Rebel focuses on Asian-flavoured plant-based meat and dairy-free cheeses. This also opens a product collaboration opportunity, targeted for Filipino consumers.”
“With this partnership, we are moving from the side of the plate to the centre, added Mario B Mendoza Jr, NutriAsia’s head of new business development. “We are confident that just as our products have become staples of every Filipino home, our consumers would also welcome these delicious, healthier, and more sustainable meat alternatives. This synergy will add yet another flavour to the Masarap, Masaya Pinoy [NutriAsia’s tagline] at-home dining experience.”
Encouraging signs for plant-based meat in the Philippines
Courtesy: Green Rebel
Citing a 2024 survey by alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI) APAC, Helga noted that Indonesian and Filipino consumers have the most positive perceptions around plant-based meat. “Indonesia and the Philippines share similar characteristics: strong economic growth, increased appetite to eat more protein, increased malnutrition issues linked to modern diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer,” she said. “We see this as an opportunity to offer healthier and more sustainable protein into the market with Southeast Asian flavours.”
The survey, which involved 960 respondents from the Philippines, found that 24% of them are looking to reduce their meat consumption this year, and 55% are looking to increase their intake of plant-based meat – across multiple metrics, health is the primary driver for these dietary shifts.
For example, 75% think vegan meat analogues are healthier, and 49% say more nutritious offerings would encourage them to increase their consumption of these products. In fact, health is by far the top factor that would influence Filipinos to choose plant-based meats over their conventional counterparts, with 66% citing this.
Price is an important consideration too, with 48% of consumers finding cost a barrier for plant-based meat consumption. The survey also highlighted gaps in the market and an opportunity for customer education, with only 37% of Filipino respondents agreeing that meat analogues are high in protein, and just 49% thinking they taste good.
Green Rebel says its products are high in protein and fibre content, and contain up to 50% less saturated fat, 30% fewer calories, and zero cholesterol, compared to conventional meats. This will appeal to the health-conscious population in the Philippines, 48% of whom have heard of these products, but never tried them. But there are signs that this will change this year, with 75% of those who haven’t tried plant-based meat likely to do so.
The introduction of Green Rebel’s products will make it easier for them to do so. Its shelf-stable SKUs – Indonesian Rendang Curry, Blackpepper Steak Bites, Korean-style BBQ Slices and Thai Green Curry – will initially be available in select Robinsons, Landmark and The Marketplace branches in May. And its frozen Steak, Beefless Bites, Crispy Fried Chick’n and Rybs are currently in the R&D stage with 50 NutriAsia foodservice accounts. All products will eventually be available across the country and online at Shoppe and Lazada.
Armed with the NutriAsia partnership, Green Rebel will now look to capitalise on the Philippines’ growing appetite for plant-based meat. “We are doubling down our penetration into existing markets, while expanding into the Philippines and Malaysia,” said Angelina. “In terms of product innovation, we are also rolling out our new exciting category, dairy-free cheese in Q2.”
Continuing its health-centric marketing drive, Beyond Meat has reformulated its line of plant-based beef crumbles, which now come in three flavours and are certified as heart-healthy and suitable for diabetes prevention and management by health associations in the US.
It’s a big year for product revamps at Beyond Meat. Weeks after announcing its Beyond IV platform, which saw its signature burger and mince undergo a recipe change to become meatier and healthier, the frozen Beyond Crumbles are now getting a makeover.
The range now includes a third flavour in the form of Italian sausage crumbles, which will roll out in the summer, while the new versions of its existing original and feisty beef crumbles are entering supermarkets across the US now, with a. bright yellow bar on the top of the packaging differentiating the new from the old.
The packaging of the bite-sized Beyond Crumbles now boasts important health certifications from the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Heart-Check Food Certification Program and the American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) Better Choices for Life Program, joining some of Beyond Meat’s other products on the list of these nutritionist-approved products, and extending its increased focus on consumer health.
“We continue to innovate across our product lines to deliver delicious taste and health benefits alike. For consumers who love the taste and versatility of beef, but want to reduce saturated fat and cholesterol in their diet, Beyond Crumbles offer a convenient, healthy protein for the cenrer of the plate,” said Beyond Meat founder and CEO Ethan Brown, who credited the health certifications to the products’ “strong nutritional profile” and “simple and clean ingredient list”.
Beyond Meat hones in on heart health and diabetes
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
The news comes shortly after Beyond Meat posted better-than-expected Q4 results, despite an 18% decline in annual net revenue. The company had already been amping up its messaging around nutrition and health, having just announced the Beyond IV products a week earlier. This approach was first evident in a marketing drive in October, which highlighted the health credentials of its Beyond Steak.
The offering was certified as heart-healthy by the AHA, then the first plant-based meat product to boast that stamp. The Beyond Crumbles followed next – and the alt-meat giant wants to amplify that on-shelf, with the new packaging bearing the AHA Heart-Check mark.
The Heart-Check programme is a part of the AHA’s drive to fight heart disease and stroke – cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the US, killing one American every 33 seconds. Red and processed meats have been consistently linked with heart disease risks, and in the US, overconsumption of these products is a real problem.
The AHA’s certification provides customers with an easy, reliable way to identify healthy foods when perusing nutrition labels. For products to meet its requirements, they need to be low in saturated fat and sodium, and contain at least 10% of the daily recommended value of essential nutrients. Beyond Meat’s chief rival Impossible Foods has also recognised the importance of this – its Beef Lite product was launched with a Heart-Check last year, the only other meat analogue to carry the certification.
But red and processed meat products aren’t just associated with ill heart health – they’ve also been linked with higher risks of developing type 2 diabetes, a condition that plagues over 11% of Americans. This is why it was important for Beyond Meat to also get certified by the ADA’s Better Choices for Life initiative, which has established evidence-based guidelines to help consumers make informed choices about the foods they purchase.
Nutrition is a key part of diabetes treatment and prevention, with adequate protein consumption essential for both those with and without the condition. With more than a third of Americans having prediabetes – and over 80% of them not knowing that – consumer education and awareness about the foods they eat is vital, and the ADA suggests that plant-based proteins provide quality protein, healthy fats, and fibre.
How health is influencing plant-based meat consumption
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond Meat is stepping up its support of scientific research into a transition from animal to plant-based proteins. One study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has reported the positive impacts on cardiovascular health by replacing conventional meat with Beyond Meat’s version over an eight-week period, including the improvement of several cardiovascular disease risk factors.
It’s doing so because consumers are largely conflicted about the health effect of plant-based meat. One survey from last year revealed that nutrition is the second-biggest reason (35%) deterring Americans from trying plant-based meat. Another poll – from the International Food Information Council (IFIC) – found that health was the main factor these consumers follow vegan or vegetarian diets.
But earlier this month, an analysis of annual IFIC surveys spanning 2012-22 suggested that 74% of Americans find plant proteins healthy, but only 39% feel the same for animal protein. But despite the consumption of plant-rich diets doubling over the years surveyed, this still stands at just 26%. At the same time, red meat intake has increased too.
A big reason for this is the rise in misinformation campaigns from meat industry interest groups over the years, which has borne apprehension about plant-based meats and their status as ultra-processed foods. This is something Brown touched upon during Beyond Meat’s Q4 earnings call last month, noting: “The current climate of misinformation and efforts by incumbents – including, sadly, pharmaceutical interests – to poison the plant-based meat well push us to accelerate gains in the health profile of our product platforms.”
He added: “We had to right the message. We can do that by yelling from the rooftops about the benefits of our existing products, or we can just try to make them even more healthy and unassailable.”
And with the new range of plant-based beef crumbles, that’s exactly what Beyond Meat is attempting to do.
A centuries-old ingredient that has been underutilised, according to researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, koji mould could hold the key to better-tasting meat analogues with a superior texture.
In Japan, it’s known as the national fungus, forming the base of fermented foods like miso, shoyu and mirin, and alcoholic beverages such as shochu and soju, for centuries. But while companies like Prime Roots, Formo and Imagindairy are all using Aspergillus oryzae – or, as it’s popularly known, koji mould – to power their meat, egg and milk analogues, some are arguing that this fungi isn’t being harnessed to its full potential in modern food applications.
Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggest that genetically engineering koji could unlock enhanced nutritional, taste and texture properties in meat analogues. Fungi-based foods are exploding in the alternative protein world, and the fungal protein market is predicted to reach nearly $400M by 2029. The Berkeley Lab argues that while a ton of biomanufactured products are made by engineered bacteria and yeast – which are “single-celled cousins of mushroom and mould” – multicellular fungi haven’t been harnessed as cellular factories to the same extent.
This is because their genomes are far more complex, with adaptations that make gene-editing a challenge. “These organisms have been used for centuries to produce food, and they are incredibly efficient at converting carbon into a wide variety of complex molecules, including many that would be almost impossible to produce using a classic host like brewer’s yeast or E. coli,” said senior author and UC Berkeley professor Jay Keasling.
“By unlocking koji mould through the development of these tools, we are unlocking the potential of a huge new group of hosts that we can use to make foods, valuable chemicals, energy-dense biofuels, and medicines. It’s a thrilling new avenue for biomanufacturing.”
Using CRISPR tech to transform koji into heme-containing meat
Courtesy: Marilyn Sargent/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Vayu Hill-Maini, a postdoctoral researcher at Keasling’s lab, worked with colleagues at UC Berkeley, the Joint BioEnergy Institute, and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability to explore the potetial of this strain of fungi, publishing the results in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications journal.
The team used CRISPR technology to develop a gene editing system that can make consistent and repreatable changes to the genome of koji. CRISPR itself has been touted as a potential embryonic treatment for hereditary diseases, but on the other hand, studies suggest altering the DNA of embryos or eggs and sperm could cause mutations that lead to other health threats.
Once the researchers established a toolkit of edits, they used the system to make modifications that elevate the mould as a fodo sorce. They first honed in on the production of the iron-based molecule heme (Impossible Foods makes a precision-fermented version for its burgers), which is responbiel for giving meat its colour and defining flavours. Next, they focused on the production of ergothioneine, an antioxidant found exclusively in fungi, which is associated with cardiovascular health benefits.
These changes transformed the colour of the fungi from white to red, and after removing excess water and grinding the harvested biomass, the mould could be shaped into a patty and fried just as you would a burger.
Hill-Maini’s next target is texture, a major pain point for meat alternatives. In 2023, a study leveraging Kroger data from 60 million US households found that texture is the aspect Americans dislike most about vegan food. Globally, too, the texture of plant-based meat alternatives’ texture is as important as their conventional counterparts for 75% of consumers, but only about 60% are actually satisfied with the former’s texture.
It has led to other researchers also exploring the best way to improve the texture and mouthfeel of meat analogues. “We think that there’s a lot of room to explore texture by varying the fiber-like morphology of the cells. So, we might be able to programme the structure of the lot fibers to be longer which would give a more meat-like experience. And then we can think about boosting lipid composition for mouthfeel and further nutrition,” said Hill-Maini.
He added: “I’m really excited about how can we further look at the fungus and, you know, tinker with its structure and metabolism for food.”
A fungi project involving Michelin-starred chefs
Courtesy: Marilyn Sargent/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Hill-Maini wants to make the next generation of fungi-based products not just palatable, but really desirable to consumers. In a separate research project, he and Keasling collaborated with Copenhagen-based Michelin-starred eatery Alchemist to explore the potential of a fellow multicellular fungus, Neurospora intermedia, which has been traditionally used in Indonesia to make oncom (produced from the fermentation of byproducts like okara).
The chefs and scientists discovered that this strain can produce many enzymes as it grows. When grown on starchy rice, it secretes an enzyme that liquifies the rice and makes it intensely sweet. “We developed a process with just three ingredients – rice, water, and fungus – to make a beautiful, striking orange-colored porridge,” said Hill-Maini. “That became a new dish on the tasting menu that utilizes fungal chemistry and colour in a dessert. And I think that what it really shows is that there’s opportunity to bridge the laboratory and the kitchen.”
Hill-Maini called it a “fundamental aspect of synthetic biology that we’re benefitting from organisms that have evolved to be really good at certain things”. Expanding on his team’s approach, he added: “What we’re trying to do is to look at what is the fungus making and try to kind of unlock and enhance it. And I think that’s an important angle that we don’t need to introduce genes from wildly different species. We’re investigating how we can stitch things together and unlock what’s already there.”
Backed by the US Department of Energy Office of Science, can the Berkeley Lab change how we see fungi and make a mark in a burgeoning alternative protein category?
UK startup Shicken has raised £4M in funds from Matthew Glover’s Veg Capital, which has tripled its investment in the plant-based meat brand. The financing will go into a manufacturing facility to scale up production of its Asian-inspired meat analogues.
A family-owned brand rooted in the founders’ Indian heritage, Shicken has secured an additional £4M in investment from Veg Capital, taking its total injection into the ready meal company to £6M.
The startup will use the capital as further capital expenditure into its manufacturing facility to increase the production capacity of vegan tikka and curry SKUs. Having recently received accreditation from the British Retail Consortium, the scale-up will make the Kent-based site one of the UK’s only dedicated plant-based, nut-free factories, and enable Shicken to produce a range of both branded and private-label products for retail and foodservice.
The investment will also fuel the expansion of its distribution both domestically and overseas, following Shicken’s launch into 380 Sprouts Farmers Market stores in the US in January, alongside a Teriyaki Kebab Skewer SKU – its first non-Indian product – at Costco in the UK, Iceland, Sweden and France. And in January 2023, the company gained a listing at Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket, rolling out into 471 stores nationwide. This year, it expects to achieve five times its current growth.
Traditional family recipes for modern Indian food
Courtesy: Shicken
Shicken was founded as a D2C business during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 by husband-and-wife duo Parm and Satvinder Bains, who were already experienced campaigners in the food industry. Going back to 2003, the pair launched a vegan chicken breast under a brand called Love Foods, which was bought out by the Co-op and saw its listing cease.
However, the Bains retained the IP for the recipe as they went on other ventures. Parm worked with multinational food manufacturers to develop and launch private-label products for multiple UK retailers, while Satvinder initiated a Punjabi catering business. When they eventually started Shicken out of their family kitchen, the company was discovered by Glover, whose firm made an investment based on the product’s quality and proposition.
“It has been a phenomenal journey for Shicken so far and we’re incredibly excited to see business scale on an international level, both as a brand and as one of the UK’s few dedicated BRC-accredited specialist primary plant-based manufacturers,” said Parm.
“Veg Capital has been the perfect partner, aligning with our commitment to a more ethical and sustainable food system and backing our potential to become a global brand and major plant-based producer within the next five years,” he added.
Shicken’s plant-based chicken is made from a blend of soy, wheat and pea proteins using tech that the brand claims imparts “a succulent chargrilled chicken-like texture”. This is then used in products ranging from tikka kebab skewers and Madras curry to butter chicken and rogan josh, which are based on recipes passed down by Satvinder’s grandmother.
Navigating a tough market by meeting consumer demands
Courtesy: Shicken
“The Shicken range is simply delicious, and their curries and kebabs are flying off the shelves – it was a no-brainer for Veg Capital to reinvest,” said Veg Capital founder and director Matthew Glover. “We’re excited to play our part in helping this family business go global over the coming years.”
In fact, meat-free products were among the worst-performing grocery categories in the UK in 2023, with sales declining by £38.4M, and volumes down by 4.2%. However, one of the brands that did do well was VFC, whose sales exploded by nearly 200% year-on-year. “Whilst it’s a tough trading environment, I do feel like we’re soon to be over the worst of it,” Glover told Green Queen in February. “The signs are that the declines are reducing, and I think we’ll be cheering the news that the categories will be back in growth during this year.”
In a wide-ranging interview with Green Queen, he explained that winning back consumer trust and shifting dietary dynamics are important yet complex tasks that take time. “As we move forward, understanding and addressing these multifaceted consumer needs and concerns will be crucial for the growth and acceptance of vegan food in the broader market,” he said.
In October, a 1,000-person survey revealed that 66% of UK consumers are unhappy with the flavour of vegan meat analogues, and 62% find them too expensive. For 51%, taste and texture are the main reasons for reducing their consumption of these products. Price and health are crucial considerations, as are environmental and ethical factors. “Convenience, too, cannot be overlooked, with the demand for easy, quick-preparation vegan options rising,” said Glover.
That will be encouraging to Shicken, whose entire ethos lies in “restaurant-quality” ready meals that are cheaper than even Tesco’s own-label premium range of Indian dishes. Can Shicken help realise Glover’s prophecy for the plant-based sector this year?
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers IKEA’s cheaper-than-meat vegan hot dogs, a new range of blended dairy products, and plant-based restaurant openings in New York City.
New products and launches
Swedish furniture giant IKEA has rolled out vegan hot dogs in the US as part of its goal to be 50% plant-based by 2025. At 70 cents, it’s cheaper than a conventional meat hot dog (which costs 75 cents).
Courtesy: IKEA
In similar price-related news, Dutch supermarket Jumbo has decided to stop all meat promotions, updating its protein transition commitment to ensure 50% of the protein on its shelves next year is plant-based, rising to 60% by 2030.
French charcuterie company Aoste has expanded into the plant-based meat sector with a new range of products under the Better Balance brand, which includes burgers, sausages, breaded cutlets, original chunks, and chunks with herbs, all with a Nutri-Score of A.
South Korea’s Shinesegae Foods has launched You Are What You Eat under its Better Foods division at last week’s Expo West. The new brand contains 10 new meat analogues and plant-based meal replacement products, and underpins the company’s plans to accelerate entry into the US market.
In New York City, vegan Ethiopian restaurant Ras Plant Based – whose original restaurant is in Crown Heights, Brooklyn – is opening its second location in West Village this May.
That’s not the only new vegan eatery in New York City, with Homemade Vegan Dumpling House, Sen Saigon (both in Chinatown) and Siete (Flatiron) all opening their doors this month.
Courtesy: Neggst/IKEA/Kerry Dairy
In what it terms as a “category first”, Kerry Dairy has introduced a range of blended Smug Dairy range of products made from cow’s milk and oat milk, which includes a milk SKU, a butter, and a Cheddar cheese block. The new offerings will hit retail shelves in the UK by the end of this month.
Californian brand Mikuna has been named the exclusive plant protein supplier at Erewhon‘s Tonic Bars, which will use the former’s regenerative, highly functional chocho protein.
German startup Neggst is developing two plant-based egg products: poached and sunny-side-up eggs with runny yolks. The innovations were unveiled at the Internorga trade fair alongside its existing vegan egg patties and bites.
And in the US, market leader Just Egg is now available at Peet’s Coffee, featuring in a new Southwest Breakfast Burrito with plant-based chorizo, Violife Cheddar, black beans, potatoes, salsa verde and green chiles, as well as an Everything Breakfast Sandwich with vegan Cheddar.
Partnerships and company updates
US flavour and fragrance house IFF has invested in high-moisture extrusion technology from German specialist Coperion to develop improved plant-based meat and seafood products.
Californian startup Triplebar Bio has partnered with ingredients giant FrieslandCampina to create a cost-effective approach to scale up production for its precision-fermented lactoferrin protein.
Courtesy: Cauldron Foods
UK tofu brand Cauldron Foods has announced a complete rebrand that includes colourful packaging and several new products, such as Spinach & Carrot and Pumpkin & Caramelised Onion Veggie Bakes, as well as a new extra-firm tofu block, which will debut at various retailers in April.
In an unexpected twist, Irish shellfish producer Errigal Bay is opening an oat milk factory next to its seafood processing facility in Donegal – which was supposed to be a cold storage plant – citing a growing market for plant-based milk and falling demand for seafood.
In more plant-based beverage production news, DSM-Firmenich has opened a pilot plant in Plainsboro, New Jersey focused on scaling up production of both dairy and vegan drinks like milks, creamers and protein shakes.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s microbial fermentation contract manufacturer ScaleUp Bio – a joint venture company between ADM and Temasek – has signed local startups Allozymes and Algrow Biosciences as new customers, alongside agreements with Terra Bioindustries (Canada) and Argento Labs (UK), weeks ahead of opening its commercial-scale pilot plant.
Policy and finance
The USDA’s National Institute of Cellular Agriculture at Tufts University – the country’s first government-funded centre for cultivated meat – has opened applications for its Seed Grant Program 2024, which will award $25,000 or $50,000 for research into alternative proteins, cellular agriculture and precision fermentation.
Over in the cocoa-free chocolate world, UK startup Nukoko has raised €1.3M in seed funding to support production of its faba-bean-to-bar chocolate offering.
Fellow UK company Clean Food Group, which makes a fermentation-based alternative to palm oil, has secured £2.5M in funding to accelerate its path to commercialisation. It follows a £2.4M round in August, and brings total investment to £13M.
Courtesy: Laurie Lapworth/University of Bath
German cultivated meat producer Innocent Meat has brought in €3M to accelerate development of its biocomponents, scale up its pilot plant, and initiate certification processes.
Students at Harvard University will host an inaugural Food 4 Thought event from April 12-14, with the aim of addressing the food system’s challenges, especially the overconsumption of meat.
Finally, there were a host of vegan wins at Expo West‘s NEXTY Awards 2024, including Macalat, MyForest Foods, Ocean’s Halo, Minor Figures, Burroughs Family Farms, Konscious Foods, GoodPop, The Coconut Cult and Le Grand.
German retail giant the Rewe Group is set to open its first 100% vegan supermarket in Germany, after introducing fully plant-based stores under its Billa supermarket chain in neighbouring Austria in 2022.
Rewe is on the verge of opening its first fully vegan supermarket in Germany this spring, located at the site of the former flagship store of Veganz in the Berlin-Friedrichshain area, according to a report by Supermarktblog.
While the company declined to confirm any plans for a new vegan store, and no trademark registration has been made for the same, the publication claims the name of the store is already attached to the facade. It has been covered during the construction work, but was temporarily visible.
The new concept will reportedly be called Rewe Fully Plant-Based, which ties in with the tagline ‘fully plant-based, totally good’ (this is also displayed in the entrance area that has now been covered up again).
Taking over from a fellow vegan supermarket
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons/CC
The new Rewe plant-based store takes over from the flagship store of Veganz, which was the first fully vegan supermarket chain in Europe. The company closed this location in December, and has now turned its attention solely to product manufacturing. When announcing the decision to shutter the store, Veganz had indicated that it “successfully sold the last branch location on Warschauer Strasse in Berlin to a subsequent operator”, which has now emerged to be Rewe.
Supermarktblog claims that the establishment of a fully plant-based concept brings with it twofold benefits of familiarity and diversification. For years, people looking for vegan products in this area ended up at Veganz, but that habit will now transfer over to the new Rewe store. Additionally, this will help Rewe propel its new brand towards the mainstream, adding to its growing list of plant-based offerings.
The report also forecasts that if the Rewe Fully Plant-Based concept ends up being successful, the retailer could subsequently launch a corresponding initiative in Rewe Center stores nationwide. This would be in line with the approach it has taken with the vegan Pflanzilla brand under its Austrian subsidiary Billa. Rewe opened the first Billa Pflanzilla store in Vienna in 2022, followed by a pop-up location in Graz last November (which ended its run last month). In addition to this, it has integrated Pflanzilla World as a mini-section in 21 of its Billa Plus stores.
With over 1,400 products on offer, Billa Pflanzilla targets consumers under 30 with its branding and design, but Rewe Fully Plant-Based marks a departure from the puns (Pflanzilla refers to ‘plantilla’) after gaining in sight from the Austrian market and wider discussions about the negative connotations of the word ‘vegan’, instead placing emphasis on plant-based nutrition. Visually, too, the new Rewe store mirrors the monochrome font opted by the preceding Veganz store, but freshly painted bright green tones could dominate points of sale.
Rewe appeals to Germany’s growing plant-based footprint
Courtesy: Rewe Group
The move is the latest in Rewe’s expanding vegan footprint. It launched a plant-based meat counter in a Kaarst store after seeing a 45% hike in vegan sales in 2022, and rolled out vegan meat analogues at service counters in select stores. The company additionally has vegan private-label brands in Rewe Beste Wahl Vegan and Rewe Bio+Vegan, which are likely to lay the foundations for its Rewe Fully Plant-Based. One consumer poll showed that 58% of Rewe customers have bought vegan products previously, and 27% replace animal-derived foods with plant-based alternatives several times a week.
It mirrors Germans’ growing interest in veganism. The country represents Europe’s largest plant-based market, and is home to the most number of flexitarians in the continent, with estimates suggesting 40-55% of its population identifies as such. And a large EU-backed survey last year found that 59% of Germans ate less meat in 2022 than the year before – the joint-highest in the EU.
The government has also expressed support for alternative proteins, earmarking €38M in its 2024 its federal budget to promote the manufacturing and processing of plant-based, cultivated and fermented proteins, support a transition to plant-based farming, and open a Proteins of the Future centre.
And earlier this month, the German Society for Nutrition updated its dietary guidelines to recommend halving meat consumption, limiting dairy intake, and eating more plant-based foods. It suggested that the latter should make up at least 75% of German diets, but stopped short of a full endorsement of plant-based meat, which it said “often differs greatly from that of animal foods” in terms of nutrition. For milk alternatives, however, the organisation stated these can be used as long as they’re fortified with sufficient amounts of calcium, vitamin B12 and iodine.
Rewe, which has dropped the prices of plant-based products to either match or be cheaper than their animal-derived counterparts in Billa and Penny stores, will hope to appeal to Germany’s growing appetite for veganism with the new plant-based store in Berlin.
Vegan entrepreneur Noah Hyams shares his top 10 future of food finds at Expo West 2024, from mycelium bacon rashers to vegan poached eggs to prebiotic candy bars.
Last week, Anaheim, California again lit up with New Hope’s Natural Products Expo West- THE tradeshow for all things natural, organic, and healthy. This year’s event drew a whopping 50,000 attendees and showcased thousands of future food and sustainable brands, both familiar and novel. While the plant-based sector is facing some headwinds, Expo featured countless awesome vegan products. Below, I share my top ten picks from my tasting and discovery tour.
Lion’s Mane Mushroom Steak by OmniFoods
Photo by Noah Hyams
OmniFoods, hailing from Hong Kong, has built a reputation for its innovative plant-based pork offerings, including its renowned ground pork mince. Now, breaking new ground, they present their latest creation: the first-ever vegan steak crafted from Lion’s Mane mushrooms, now available in the US market. The flavor, texture, and smell were unreal. Be sure to try it when you get a chance!
Poached Egg by Yo Egg
Photo by Noah Hyams
Israeli startup Yo Egg creates chicken-free plant-based sunny-side-up and poached eggs. The eggs are made from a blend of soy and chickpea protein and sunflower oil. The yolks are designed to replicate the runny texture of traditional eggs- they are encased within the whites using a film made from alginate. I got to try the just-released poached eggs and I loved it. Ideal for brunch’s classic dish: Eggs Benedict.
Dumplings by Sobo Foods
Photo by Noah Hyams
Californian Sobo Foods makes frozen traditional Asian dumplings with a plant-based twist. At the Expo, Sobo was showing off three meat- and dairy-free varieties: “Pork” & Chive with a Chinese kick, Curry & Potato with a Japanese flair, and Kimchi & Mushroom with a Korean twist. I wasn’t the only fan: co-founder Eric Wu won ‘Best Pitch’ at VEGPRENEUR’s Pitch For The Planet competition, which took place during Expo.
Stuffed Chicken by TiNDLE Foods
Photo by Noah Hyams
Singapore-based TiNDLE Foods, a leading plant-based chicken startup, unveiled its newest offering: its TiNDLE Stuffed Chicken. Featuring initial options like Chicken Parmigiana, this product boasts a crispy breadcrumb coating on the outer layer, while the interior allows for customization with a variety of seasonings and sauces. The company is dedicated to crafting inventive plant-based foods that excel in taste, quality, and convenience, the company remains steadfast in its commitment. This plant-based stuffed chicken is scheduled to be available for order in Spring 2024! PS- we loved TiNDLE’s new oat-based barista milk too!
Cheese by Umyum
Photo by Noah Hyams
UmYum Foods, a Canadian plant-based food tech company, showcased its cashew-based dairy alternatives including its popular ‘Camembert’ at Expo West, marking its first appearance in the US since the company’s inception in early 2021. The brand specializes in artisan, fermented vegan cheeses crafted using traditional cheesemaking techniques. In addition to its cheese lineup, UmYum offers a variety of complementary cashew-based products including milk chocolate, butter, and puff pastry.
Nutty Candy Bar by Harken
Photo by Noah Hyams
Harken Sweets, an emerging ‘better-for-you’ candy brand, has unveiled its latest innovation: plant-based renditions of classic candy bars enriched with the nutritional goodness of dates. The Fair Trade-certified treats boast a remarkable 75% reduction in sugar content, 13 grams of prebiotic fiber, and less than 150 calories. The gluten-free and soy-free bars are slated for release in the US market as early as February. Highly recommend!
Coconut Bacon by Madly Hadley
Photo by Noah Hyams
Based out of San Diego, Chef Madly Hadley is dedicated to building a plant-based future, which led her to create a vegan bacon alternative made from nutrient-rich coconut flesh. The company is committed to sourcing only the finest ingredients for its products, which are certified organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, and soy-free. The coconut rashers are now available nationwide in the United States at Sprouts Farmers Market stores- a must-try for bacon lovers!
Better Cheddar by Eat UNrestricted
Photo by Noah Hyams
Headquartered in Atlanta, Eat UNrestricted makes clean-label vegan sauces that cater to a wide range of dietary restrictions. Founder Dianna King was raised in a traditional Southern household with a dairy allergy so she is well-versed in the challenges faced by families accommodating dietary restrictions. This led her to launch 100% plant-based Creamy Cheddar Cheese sauce and now everyone can enjoy delicious meals without compromise.
MyBacon by MyForest Foods
Photo by Noah Hyams
New York-based MyForest Foods recently unveiled its innovative mycelium-based MyBacon, which I got to taste at Expo and I can confirm that it’s awesome. The company just launched the rashers nationwide at Whole Foods, allowing them to tap a much wider audience, and they are sure to sizzle, given what I tasted!
Ice Cream Bonbons by Eclipse Foods
Photo by Noah Hyams
Based in Alameda, California, Eclipse Foods is an established name in the plant-based dairy world. The company makes ice cream and other dairy alternatives from a blend of non-GMO plants such as cassava, corn, and potato. I got to try their newest creation, Chef-created Eclipse Bonbons, dairy-free ice cream bites enrobed in a decadent chocolate coating and they did not disappoint. Indulgent and addictive!
Described as the “Fortune 500 of agrifood tech”, food tech consultancy Forward Fooding has released its 2023 FoodTech 500 list, with the highest number of companies belonging to the plant-based sector. Other alternative protein startups also had strong representation on the list.
US mycelium fermentation startup Nature’s Fynd has topped Forward Fooding’s FoodTech 500 list for 2023, with four other future food companies joining it in the top 10. These include fellow US mycelium protein company Meati, Spanish plant-based meat maker Heura, US molecular farming pioneer Nobell Foods, and German fermentation tech startup Planet A Foods.
The annual list – which began in 2019 – recognises entrepreneurs addressing challenges throughout the food value chain, highlighting the most innovative businesses at the convergence of food, technology and sustainability. This year, over 1,500 companies submitted applications to be featured on the list, representing 34 domains, including plant-based, ag biotech, protein fermentation, cellular agriculture, and vertical and indoor farming.
Of the 500 companies selected, nearly a third (32.3%) were female-founded, and just over a sixth (17.8%) had Black, Asian or minority ethnic founders. Meanwhile, 95.4% of the finalists had received investment, with two unicorn companies (having raised over $1B without going public) and four publicly traded businesses.
Despite a challenging landscape in terms of both sales and optics, the plant-based industry was the most well-represented domain, with 63 companies (12.6%) appearing on the FoodTech 500 list for 2023. This was followed by farm management and precision farming (55 companies) and vertical and indoor farming (46 companies)
Future food startups innovating with fermentation had a strong presence too, with 33 such businesses on the list, which also had 23 cellular agriculture companies (even without any of their products actually being on the market, which displays their potential).
Courtesy: Forward Fooding
Alt-protein, agtech and next-gen food companies headline FoodTech 500
The ranking combines scores from three key areas – business size, digital footprint, and sustainability. The sustainability scoring framework was based on selected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the UN, with SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 13 (Climate Action) being the most addressed.
The business size score predicts growth based on financial indicators like the number of employees, funding stage, total funds raised and number of offices, while the digital footprint ranking forecasts digital presence growth based on website traffic, social media performance and follower growth.
The companies are divided into eight macro activities: Agtech, Next-Generation Food and Drinks, Food Processing, Food Delivery, Kitchen and Restaurant Tech, Consumer Apps and Services, Food Safety and Traceability, Surplus and Waste Management. Agtech dominates the rankings, with over a third (34.6%) of companies on the FoodTech 500 list involved in this space. This is followed closely by Next-Gen Food and Drinks, making up 28.6% of the rankings.
It’s the latter category that houses the five alternative protein companies mentioned above, with Nature’s Fynd – a Bill Gates-backed startup that makes breakfast patties, cream cheeses and yoghurts using its Fy protein – leading the overall list and Heura the highest-ranking plant-based startup (at 7th). The only other alternative protein company to surpass Heura is Meati (6th), which uses mycelium to make whole-cut chicken and beef analogues.
Other companies in the future food sector that make up the top 50 include InnovoPro, Algama Foods, The Seaweed Company, BlueNalu, Koa, Arbiom, Biomilq and Voyage Foods.
“Embracing alternative protein technologies (plant-based, cell-cultured, molecularly farmed, and fermentation-derived) is crucial for food security. These can complement culinary tradition while introducing exciting new options for consumers,” said Christian Pichler, managing director of Gerber VC. “But caution is warranted against misinformation spread by traditional lobby groups with vested interests and significant PR resources.”
Forward Fooding is embarking on a global tour to celebrate the release of the list, starting with London (today), and going on to San Francisco (March 21-22), Stockholm (April 9), Berlin (May), Barcelona (June), and Dubai (September).
We spoke to Max Leveau, co-founder and chief operating officer of Forward Fooding, about the 2023 FoodTech 500 list, the plant-based dominance, the biggest surprises, and the importance of female leadership.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Green Queen: Despite the sales declines and often negative narrative around veganism, why do you think plant-based was the biggest category?
Max Leveau: This year’s FT500 accounts for 63 Plant-based companies, which represents 13% of total companies and the most represented domain within our taxonomy. Our proprietary data tells us that despite the global VC turmoil, there are over 970 plant-based companies currently operating in the global marketplace. Although 47 shut down over the last couple of years, we still see there is strong demand and new companies keep emerging.
Yet, for the first time, in 2021, more capital was cumulatively invested in fermentation and cellular agriculture than plant-based companies. This marked the beginning of a major shift in the alternative proteins sector.
Courtesy: Forward Fooding
GQ: Which plant-based, fermentation, and cell ag companies stood out to you the most, and why?
ML: Over the past couple of years, we have witnessed two major ‘forces’ driving the alternative protein sector: increased consolidations and pressing scepticism, mostly driven by media, around companies’ ability to scale up production and overcome regulation hurdles (for example, cultivated meat) and, most of all, to create great-tasting products that will determine consumers’ mass adoption in the long haul. Even though investments in alternative proteins have dropped by 62% since 2021, the sector has reached a tipping point. Despite the negative investment trend, we believe that the current ‘crisis’ will help this industry in the long term.
These factors are forcing entrepreneurs and investors to focus on turning existing companies with strong fundamentals into profitable businesses while forcing smaller and less resilient companies to get consolidated or phased out. For example, we expect to see more ‘hybridisation‘ in product development. This involves creatively combining protein sources and processes (such as plant-based proteins with fermented or cultivated fats). By blending ingredients and technologies, companies can address key product experience elements. These include taste, texture, and nutritional value, but also scalability – think mycelium for umami flavouring of plant-based meat products, serum-free growth medium for cultivated meat, companies focusing on cell cultures, etc. Companies such as Mycorena, The Seaweed Company or Multus Bio come to mind.
Finally, despite reluctance from certain countries (like Italy and France), we do expect cellular agriculture to become regulated by more countries in the next couple of years. Recent approvals from the FDA – and investments from various governments (such as the UK, Canada and the Netherlands) to support the research and growth of the sector, alongside precision fermentation – are paving the way towards more regulatory approvals in the near term.
GQ: Most of the companies on the list have only been founded in the last five to six years. What does it say about the industry?
ML: It tells us three things. As with any tech sector, when a new technology solution is on the path to becoming mature, more ventures get created because the barriers to entry are relatively low.
More entrepreneurs are building ‘enabling solutions’, such as ‘software for vertical farms’ or growth media for cultivated meat/fish for existing industries (like vertical farming or cellular agriculture).
This is also a reflection of how the global agrifood tech investment landscape has evolved in the past two years:
Global Venture Capital is going through difficult times, with AgriFoodTech being no exception to the rule. Since its peak year in 2021, investments in the sector have dropped by 74% to reach $17.1.B in 2023. Many companies have had to shut down operations in the past year. Yet, making a comparison between 2021 and 2023 makes us understand how the investment landscape has been shifting, and we believe there is room for optimism.
Courtesy: Forward Fooding
First of all, not only has the number of deals (-44% from 2021 to 2023) not dropped as much as the capital invested (-74%), but the median deal has actually increased since 2021. Mega-deals have vanished (the average deal size fell from $31.5M to $14.1M), and generalist investors are leaving the space, while specialist and impact-focused ones tend to go ‘beyond the hype’ to invest in a broader range of solutions across the supply chain (such as technologies to fight food waste). This translates into a new distribution of investments, previously dominated by food delivery and alternative proteins (part of our Next-Gen vertical), as well as a growing proportion of early-stage investments towards less mature or ‘hyped’, but nonetheless impactful solutions.
New regional dynamics are also emerging. From 23% in 2021, 36% of total investments in the sector went to European companies in 2023. Europe is becoming a true hotbed for agrifood tech innovation, while Asia-Pacific has seen a drop from 11% to 1% (mostly due to a decline in China). And finally, North America continues to lead the sector, gathering 48% of global investments in 2023.
Overall, it is safe to say that capital is no longer a ‘commodity’. Entrepreneurs have to focus on building ‘healthier’ businesses with a clear path to profitability, and ideally ‘asset-light’ models. They also seem to be able to rely more and more on public funding to support their growth, as shown by the sharp increase in the number of grants allocated to agrifood tech startups (up from 6% to 23%).
More patience and smart capital will be needed to solve the challenges of our food system. Looking at the latest investment figures, this seems to be going in the right direction at the moment.
GQ: Which domain were you most surprised by?
ML: Beyond alternative proteins, there are a few domains that are standing out.
First of all, we are quite amazed to see how ag biotech is currently growing. From 17 companies in 2022, it has almost doubled this year with 36 companies within the finalists, as the topics of soil health and microbiome, and seed genetics-focused technologies like molecular farming are gaining more traction. 2023 finalist companies include the likes of Tropic, Soilsteam and Mozza Foods.
Looking at global investments, the surplus and waste management activity went from representing 3% of global investments in 2021 to 13% in 2023. This is well represented in the FoodTech 500 with food waste tech and food sharing platforms (26 companies), and upcycled ingredients, food surplus and waste efficiency (25 companies), with players such as Winnow, Spoiler Alert, Fazla and Peelpioneers.
Finally, it’s quite impressive to see how resilient the farm management and precision farming domain has been year after year, with the growing impact of remote sensing and AI, and led by companies like CropX, Agrivi and Cropin.
GQ: Do you think there’s still some ways to go in terms of female leadership in food tech?
ML: Yes, definitely. However, we think the agrifood tech space is intrinsically more diverse than other tech industries. As a matter of fact, over the years, we’ve been reporting that the food tech space is rather diverse, and when using FoodTech 500 as a proxy of the overall space, we have witnessed an increase year-on-year of female-founded businesses among FoodTech 500 alumni. On average, we went from X in 2020 to 30%+ in 2023.
GQ: Where is the food tech sector lacking, and what are its biggest challenges going into the rest of 2024?
ML: With more transparency and self-discipline from founders, combined with more thorough due diligence from investors, we think the agrifood tech industry can capitalise on the growing interest in leveraging technology to improve our food and agriculture system to make it more resilient and sustainable for both people and our planet.
As the market is correcting and science is advancing in the right direction, we believe 2024 could be a vintage year to invest in agrifood tech. Valuations are becoming more ‘sensitive’, and entrepreneurs do have to present a clear and solid path to profitability to be in a position to raise capital.
There’s a need for patient capital too. As AgriFood is one of the most slow-moving/resistant industries to change and technology adoption, we think most investors underestimate the pace at which new solutions can be brought to the mass market. A clear example of this is the plant-based category, which has been around for almost a century now through niche products (mostly vegetarian and vegan options), and only in the last decade has started to really get a growing interest as diets are shifting towards more plant-based. Despite all of this, in the US alone – the most mature market for plant-based meat 2.0 – sales reached only 1% of total meat sales in 2022.
Another example is the vertical farming sector currently going through a ‘disillusion phase’, after a few companies went through bankruptcy, despite having raised hundreds of millions in capital. This was mostly due to a misalignment between investors’ expectations, the readiness of the technology, and the validity of the business model of some companies.
With generalist investors leaving the space, and more and more ‘educated’ agrifood-tech-focused funds emerging, we expect to see a big change in that regard. Additionally, the speed of evolution for novel foods and alternative protein regulation around the world will have a key role to play.
GQ: What is your hope for the companies who have made it onto the list?
ML: That they will keep focusing on building ‘cash-positive businesses’ capable of generating real impact at a food system level. They will be able to adapt their business financing needs, as global markets may remain very difficult in the coming years as far as funding is concerned. And they’ll keep focusing on impact and mission-driven businesses that can prove to be a force of good in making our food system more sustainable and resilient.
Check out Forward Fooding’s full 2023 FoodTech 500 list here.
Food tech community FoodHack and ingredient and fragrance giant Givaudan have teamed up to launch a FoodTech World Cup, a global competition aimed at finding disruptive technologies and consumer concepts.
With investment in the agrifood tech sector halving in 2023, and legislators in the US and the EU putting up barriers towards alternative proteins in the form of labelling restrictions and outright bans, food tech startups are in a bit of a dire situation.
What makes it worse, in fact, is that now is when we need these innovators the most, with the world burning down and policymakers – for the large part – not really giving a fuck. Lately, there has been a growing emphasis on trying to find solutions to feed a 10-billion-strong population by mid-century, just as extreme weather events effect crop failures all over the world. We need food tech solutions, and these startups need help.
This is why FoodHack has partnered with Givaudan to establish the inaugural FoodTech World Cup. The global tournament will tap into local networks to unearth the industry’s most talented founders breaking through the ranks, and help accelerate their growth internationally.
“The ultimate goal is to find disruptive technologies and consumer concepts,” says Alexandre Bastos, head of front-end innovation at Givaudan. “Besides the fun part and an analogy with the most famous sports tournament in the world, the thinking behind the World Cup was to ensure global outreach, engagement with thought leaders in each region, make it competitive and look for startups from everywhere around the world.”
Multiple verticals covering everything food tech
Courtesy: FoodHack
Through its partnership with FoodHack and its partner climate conference HackSummit, Givaudan hopes to “uncover never-before-seen solutions created by exceptional, entrepreneurial Founders who are driving real-world impact for a healthier, more sustainable future for all”, explains Bastos.
The applications are open for stealth-to-seed startups across seven verticals. Food Circularity involves sidestreams, upcycling and the circular economy; AI and Digital Tools covers disrupting NPD and consumer understanding; Sustainable Proteins focuses on alternatives to animal-derived foods to feed a growing population; Personalised Nutrition addresses food as medicine; Food Safety and Traceability deals with tech across the value chain; Novel Food Product Concepts encompasses CPG ‘brands of the future’; and New Ingredients and Technologies is concerned with improving sensory experiences, health and nutrition.
There is no cap on the number of applications for the FoodTech World Cup, whose qualifiers will run as six Demo Days – one for each region across Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North Africa, North America, and Sub-Saharan Africa. A total of 60 founders will be shortlisted to present their startups’ potential to a lineup of judges from around the world, including E2JDJ’s Stephanie Dorsey, Clear Current Capital’s Steve Molino, Better Bite Ventures’ Michal Klar, the Nestlé R+D Accelerator’s Susana Reber, The Kitchen’s Amir Zaidman, as well as members from Givaudan’s own team.
“It is great to see a food tech competition that highlights not just the solutions from Europe and the US, but also other parts of the world, especially emerging markets. I am looking forward to seeing all the innovations by founders from Asia in particular,” says Klar.
Asked what will make a startup stand out, Bastos responds: “Solid IP and strongly closing an existing consumer or industry gap. Furthermore, a problem or opportunity which is sizeable at a global level.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a traditional pitch competition, but the approach to the FoodTech World Cup is interesting, because instead of three or four judges making all of the decisions, it’s bringing together many judges based on their respective geographies,” adds Molino. “Not only will this better allow for geographic nuances to be taken into account, but it’s also just a fun way to get a global perspective on startups with the highest potential impact. I also love the idea that the winners of each region will be able to pitch live at the summit.”
Collaborative process to give the winner exactly what they need
Hack Group founders Arman Anatürk, Camille Bossell, and Emilie Dellecker | Courtesy: Hack Group
Bastos outlines the FoodTech World Cup’s goal to “create an impact for the winner”. And what might that look like? “We will sit together and decide together what would help them most: a proof of concept, an analytical assessment, a pilot run in biotech/extrusion, regulatory support and guidance, consumer understanding, connection with our innovation centres, access to MISTA (San Francisco), Tropical Lab (Brazil), PIC and/or NURASA (Singapore), etc.” he says.
“Essentially, we will take the winner through a due diligence process to best understand the synergies with Givaudan and how we can create a smart and meaningful impact.”
Bastos believes food tech’s biggest challenge right now is capital, followed by the speed of scaling up tech, given the associated complexity, costs, capacity and adoption challenges. “It is amazing how fast the ‘me too’ appear when a promising technology comes to play,” he says. “It is then very frustrating to see so many, largely at the same level with the same challenge, disputing venture capital means and essentially not getting what they really need to scale and scale it fast.”
Finally, touching upon the decline in investment last year, he states that fundamental economic and industry issues have “moved deep pockets away” from the food tech sector, and slowed down expert investors. “We think there was a correction needed if you compare to the high valuations of 2021, but it feels like the downward swing is a little too severe,” he explains.
“We see some reaction, but it is very difficult to predict how it will play out in 2024. This is the time when we will see true leaders standing out to sustain and drive toward the next curve.”
Applications for the FoodTech World Cup are open until April 11, 2024.
Dutch cultivated meat leader Meatable has cut the production time for its cultivated meat by half, making it the fastest process in the sector. This means its hybrid pork sausages are much cheaper to produce, months before their expected launch in Singapore.
Ahead of its market launch in Singapore later this year, Meatable has achieved a significant breakthrough in its manufacturing capabilities, allowing its patented Opti-ox tech to produce its cultivated pork sausages in just four days, with half as many bioreactors and significantly lower costs.
This means the Dutch startup can make cultivated meat faster than anyone else in the industry, and represents an important step towards the large-scale production and commercialisation of its hybrid pork. Scalability and costs have been the two major barriers to cultivated meat for years, and Meatable says its production milestone – which sees the timeline of the transformation from cell to sausage cut in half – can overcome these challenges.
“The Meatable process centres around the use of pluripotent stem cells [PSCs] with our patented, proprietary opti-ox technology, which enables those cells to differentiate into mature muscle and fat cells – the ingredients for real meat in a fast and cost-efficient process,” Meatable co-founder and chief technology officer Daan Luining told Green Queen. “By reducing cell differentiation time in half, our process now requires nearly half as many bioreactors at scale, cutting both CAPEX and OPEX costs and enabling a more efficient use of production space.
How Meatable makes cultivated meat so quickly
Courtesy: Meatable
In a chat with Green Queen in August – after a Series B funding round that took its total raised to $95M – Meatable co-founder and CEO Krijn de Nood explained that its Opti-ox technology allows the team to make its products by isolating a single animal cell, without the need for fetal bovine serum.
“While immortalised cell lines are more commonly found in the industry, they require an alteration of the cells to allow them to multiply indefinitely,” he said. The PSCs Luining mentioned above “have the natural ability to keep on multiplying and to do so rapidly”, and at the time, could double in just 24 hours. “The difficulty with using PSCs is that it can be more challenging to change them from stem cells into more specialised cells, such as muscle or fat,” said de Nood.
But by combining these cells with its technology, Meatable was able to produce real muscle and fat cells that are fully differentiated in just eight days. “This is coupled with a perfusion process that allows the team to work in a continuous cycle to generate very high cell densities,” he added. “This means we can grow a lot of cells in our bioreactors, and harvest cultured meat from the reactors continuously. This is a great step forward as it increases productivity and makes the process easy to scale.”
Now, that timeline has been halved, allowing Meatable to produce cultivated pork 60 times faster than the time it takes farmers to rear a pig for pork, and significantly quicker than other cultivated meat processes. “We have been able to create high-quality, fully differentiated cultivated meat with the right level of protein, fat accumulation, and key meat flavours in only four days, a significant reduction in a process that typically takes weeks,” noted Luining. “We are constantly working to improve the efficiency of our process, while also increasing the amount and quality of the fat and muscle tissue in our product.”
Crucially, this drives down production costs too, which represent a key bottleneck for cultivated meat companies. According to Leticia Goncalves, global foods president at ADM (an investor in companies like Good Meat and Believer Meats), cultivated meat needs to reach production costs of $2.92 per lb to be cost-competitive with conventional meat. And while producers have managed to reduce costs by 99% in less than a decade, McKinsey forecasts that it will still take until 2030 for it to reach price parity.
“With this breakthrough, we are able to drive down the costs and work towards producing meat at a competitive price point faster than others in our category,” said Luining. “The breakthrough results in less labour, energy, infrastructure, ingredients, and water used in our process, making us more scalable, cost-efficient, and also more sustainable for the planet.”
Asked how its first products will be priced, he added: “At launch, we are confident our price point will match those for high-end organic meats, and then we plan to ultimately match mass-market pricing. We are optimistic that Meatable will reach price parity with traditional farmed meat in the next few years.”
Meatable looking to capitalise on regulatory progress
Courtesy: Meatable
Speaking of market launch, Meatable expects to roll out its cultivated pork sausages in mid-2024 in Singapore, where it filed a dossier for regulatory approval last year. It has conducted several rounds of public tastings. These showcased multiple prototypes of its hybrid meat, which is a blend of cultivated pig cells and plant-based ingredients.
Hybrid meat has been touted by investors as the way cultivated meat will enter the market on a broad scale. Speaking to Green Queen last year, Heather Courtney, general partner at Alwyn Capital, said: “It’s likely the only way to make cultivated commercially feasible… as the chances of being able to economically produce 100% cultivated products that can compete on price with commoditised meat are slim to none in the next 10+ years.”
This is echoed by Luining, who confirmed that Meatable’s eventual hybrid sausages will comprise at least 33% of cultivated meat. “This delivers a truly superior flavour and taste experience over plant-based alternatives to satisfy the quality that meat-eating consumers recognize and expect,” he explained. “While our process can result in fully cultivated meat, the speed and scale of production would be limited, and the hybrid approach results in a game-changing product.’
While it eventually wants to get into retail, Meatable’s initial entry into the market will be through restaurant menus in Singapore – as has been the case with all other cultivated meat companies to have launched their products, such as Good Meat in Singapore and the US, and Upside Foods in the latter. And given the regulatory success of these companies in the US, Meatable is eyeing an expansion there in 2025, and is already in talks with the USDA and FDA over the regulatory process.
As for its home continent, things are a little tricky. The EU has the world’s most robust food safety regulations around novel foods, and so far, no company has filed for approval in the bloc. In fact, some countries have been trying to create further barriers towards regulatory clearance for cultivated meat, with Italy having banned its sale and production, and France and Romania looking to do the same.
The Netherlands, for its part, has been much more progressive in its support for these proteins, facilitating a €60M grant for cellular agriculture in 2022, and expressed its support in the EU meeting about cultivated meat, with food quality and agriculture minister Piet Adema saying: “We believe that it is important to support innovations that create production methods for animal proteins complementary to, and not as a substitute to, conventional sustainable production.”
Putting its money where its mouth is, the Dutch government in January became the first EU nation to develop a framework to allow public tasting events of cultivated meat. Meatable has already filed a dossier and is awaiting the green light to sample its pork sausages to consumers in the country.
“Our ultimate goal is to get our products on the plates of consumers all over the world through our future restaurant and retail partners,” said Luining. “Recent regulatory developments have boosted confidence in the industry… We look forward to capitalising on this momentum.”
Max Elder, founder of former plant-based meat company Nowadays and managing director of Food System Innovations, reflects on the journey of his vegan chicken nugget startup, explains why it was forced to cease trading, talks VC funding in food tech, and reveals if he’d do it all over again.
In August, Californian startup Nowadays announced it was shutting down. The decision came “due to an inability to raise venture funds in this market”, a year after it successfully closed a $7M seed funding round. The news reflected the growing venture capital pains faced by the plant-based industry – and food tech as a whole sector.
Max Elder, who was the co-founder and CEO of the brand, had noted that the nuggets were performing well in D2C and retail channels, with many consumers returning to purchase more too. But the financials associated with frozen food distribution for a startup of Nowaday’s scale were too steep. “The economics only work if you have the capital to really push a multi-year brand building and marketing strategy and it’s really hard to access capital now,” he was quoted as saying.
A highly respected figure in the alternative protein industry – who has been featured in the New York Times, the Guardian, Forbes and Fast Company – had predicted that in the long term, “the headwinds for conventional proteins will only get stronger”, saying: “I think we just need to batten down the hatches and weather the storm, and sometimes that means some companies can’t survive because there’s limited access to capital.”
Since then, he has been working as a managing director at sustainability non-profit Food System Innovations, which supports initiatives taking animals out of the global food system. We spoke to Elder about Nowadays, why it reached the end of its tether, and what the future of this industry looks like.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Green Queen: Did you see the end coming? What finally made you decide to say that’s it?
Max Elder: Every startup goes through an existential crisis between each round of financing, so all founders see the end frequently. Running a startup is a tricky balancing act of challenges and opportunities, successes and failures, growth and setbacks. There wasn’t one event that ended Nowadays – there were a plethora of factors, many outside of our control, that made it impossible to raise additional capital. We ceased operations when we became insolvent and couldn’t sustain the business any further.
Courtesy: Nowadays
GQ: If you could do it all again, would you?
ME: Absolutely. Founding a mission-driven food company is an extraordinary privilege I don’t take for granted. Building is a formidable challenge and feeding people is insanely rewarding. Most importantly, I’ve never had such a high velocity of learning in my life. I don’t plan on doing it all over again anytime soon.
I currently see a higher impact approach for how I spend my time: I’ve transitioned to work on systems-level change and category-level innovation at a public charity called Food System Innovations, co-founded by David Meyer and Galina Hale. While Nowadays was my shot on goal, I’m most excited these days by redesigning the playing field.
GQ: Do you have any big regrets? What would you do differently?
ME: I honestly don’t have any big regrets. I think there are a few I would do differently next time. The first is being more intentional about the co-founder relationship. That relationship is mission-critical and often ends at some point in a company’s journey, like it did at Nowadays. I also would have shut down Nowadays earlier than I did. It’s an insanely hard choice to make, and it’s hard to find allies in that choice.
Winding down your business is emotionally draining (layoffs, including yourself; liquidation efforts; legal) and can take a long time and cost a lot of money. I now help founders better understand what they need to responsibly wind down their business.
GQ: What are your biggest learnings? And what are you most proud of?
ME: Nowadays accomplished a lot. We built a differentiated brand, patented whole-cut manufacturing processes, launched into retail with Whole Foods Market, secured restaurant partnerships with critically-acclaimed partners, and fed a lot of people. While those are all impressive, I think what I’m most proud of is how I managed the company. Despite some really thorny problems and tough challenges, I always made values-based decisions and communicated honestly.
My biggest learning was that you can feel proud even if you don’t achieve your desired outcome as long as you hold yourself accountable to your own values. Even when I’ve failed, my values have never failed me.
GQ: You were straddling the line of processed plant-based food and ‘clean label’ with a product that had a short ingredient list. We are constantly told that processed products turn people off the plant-based category. Is this what consumers want? What’s your take on all this? Do we need more clean-label products?
ME: Meat is a $1.4T industry globally and a $180B industry in the US. The average American eats 330 lbs of meat (including seafood) annually, and about nine out of 10 Americans eat meat everyday. The market for meat is gigantic.
There are many different consumer segments who have different pain points for different meal occasions across different channels. There is no singular value proposition that consumers want. I believe food products in the US need to taste delicious and be priced competitively. For some consumers during some meal occasions in some channels, cleaner labels matter.
That said, I’m worried about the mis- and disinformation campaigns around ultra-processing and alt-proteins we’re seeing, as I see much of these concerns as industry talking points that eaters use to post-rationalise, more so than real pain points that drive purchase decisions.
Courtesy: Nowadays
GQ: Do you think the vegan nugget market is oversaturated?
ME: Market saturation at a macro level is when the supply of a product becomes higher than its demand. Sometimes this happens because the market has too many competitors offering the same product, or when the product has already reached the entirety of its customer base. While I believe there are many plant-based nugget products competing with each other, I also believe that the product hasn’t reached the entirety of its potential market.
If you think the market for vegan nuggets is only made up of vegan consumers, the vegan nugget market is oversaturated. If you think the market for vegan nuggets is made up of flexitarians, the vegan nugget market is full of blue sky. Chicken nuggets amount to an $8B market in the US; there’s plenty of room for demand capture.
GQ: What advice would you give for existing and new plant-based brands?
ME: I feel like I should be the one taking advice from existing and new plant-based brands! One pivot I made too late at Nowadays that I’d love to see other brands make is a pivot to institutional procurement. Plant-based products offer truly impressive environmental benefits that aren’t accurately priced in the market today.
While the climate crisis hasn’t quite yet become a consumer problem, it’s increasingly becoming an ESG problem. If consumer demand signals are weakening, institutional ESG commitments are getting stronger. The downside is that institutional sales cycles can be long and opaque, distribution hard to secure, and prices relatively low, but the upside is the potential for high, consistent volumes at a better margin than retail.
GQ: There’s a lot of talk about whether VC funding is the right choice for founders/startups. What’s your take? Would you take VC money again?
ME: I think the funding model you pursue needs to depend on the business you want to build. If you want to build for impact on a short-time horizon, you need a higher-risk capital source to support growth. It’s hard to imagine other sources of capital to underwrite innovative startups trying to solve big challenges quicker than venture.
GQ: Can you describe what a day in the life of a plant-based founder was like? Take us through your mental state on the average day.
ME: I think the founder role is overly romanticised. There are a lot of fun parts of the job, but a lot of the role is administrative work and constant problem-solving and making sure things get done. My days typically rotated through a cycle of strategy, fundraising, and capacity-building. I would build a strategic vision supported by core enabling milestones we planned to achieve; sell part of the company to secure the capital required to execute on that vision; and then build capacity to hit those milestones.
Throughout those cycles, my mental states fluctuated highly based on the frequency and scale of opportunities versus the frequency and scale of challenges. Some days, my mental state was calm, confident and proud. Other days, I’d be insanely stressed and not my best self. I’m so impressed with and inspired by people who build.
Courtesy: Nowadays
GQ: Do you still believe in the category? What needs to change?
ME: The more time I spend in the food and climate worlds, the more deeply I believe in alternative proteins. The problem of industrialised animal farming is only getting worse, and the alternatives are only getting better. I see truly mind-blowing innovation at a pretty fast pace for the food industry addressing an incredibly complex problem. Farmed animals are all complex living beings, so replicating their bodies with plants is a formidable task.
The industry is nascent. I see some opportunities to accelerate the protein transition across both supply and demand. On the supply side, I’m excited by the impact of choice architecture and default shifts at institutions. I’m inspired by market shaping efforts to accelerate alt-protein value chains and the potential of offtakes and advance market commitments. I’m also seeing some big improvements in taste and texture, which I hope continues, and I’m increasingly growing bullish on blended/hybrid meats (new category-level nomenclature to come).
On the demand side, I’m eager to see more category-level demand campaigns (they need funding!) and efforts to combat mis- and dis-information campaigns. Price, taste and nutrition are all necessary but not sufficient for plant-based products to break into the mainstream; we also need to understand and engage the social, cultural and political elephants in the room. All that said, I believe the alternative protein category is not a question of if, but when.
A majority of Americans recognise the health and environmental benefits of vegan food, yet only a quarter are willing to adopt plant-rich diets. Plus, there has been an increase in red meat consumption over the years, according to a new review.
Over the last year, multiple studies have highlighted the disconnect between Americans’ eating patterns and their attitudes towards climate change. For example, one survey suggested that 74% of them didn’t think eating meat was bad for the planet, while another found that the number of vegans was at a 10-year low. US consumers also eat way more meat than is recommended, and one study noted that meat consumption needs to come down by 82% if the country is to avoid more climate disasters.
Things become interesting when you look at longer-term trends, though. That’s exactly what researchers at Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences did, perusing national surveys from the International Food Information Council spanning 2012 to 2022 and examining how Americans eat. Published in the Nutrients journal, the analysis covered over 1,000 consumers, and found that they had a paradoxical view of meat and plant-based food consumption.
“US consumers have favourable perceptions of foods and beverages that support human and environmental health, but that’s not translating into what they’re purchasing and consuming,” explained lead researcher Katherine Consavage Stanley.
More plants, yet more meat
Courtesy: Nutrients
The review of the surveys found that 74% of Americans find plant proteins healthy, a number that drops sharply to 39% for animal protein. Between 2016 and 2019, the percentage of consumers believing that animal proteins were unhealthy increased from 10.3% to 16.4%, before falling to 15.4% in 2020. Meanwhile, between 2019 and 2020, 24% of respondents actively tried to consume animal proteins, and 23% attempted to limit or avoid them. More than a third (38%) looked to eat plant-based proteins in this time.
But despite the percentage of Americans following plant-rich diets more than doubling across the years surveyed, it still only made up about a quarter (26%) of the total. Gen Z and millennials were more likely to adopt these eating patterns than older consumers like Gen X, baby boomers and the silent generation. That said, adoption of plant-forward diets has risen across generations over time, reaching 37% for young consumers and 17% for older Americans.
However, this has coincided with a rise in red meat consumption too, with the number of people who reported eating more red meat increasing from 13% in 2020 to 19% in 2022, and those who reduced their intake dipping from 31% to 27%. Surprisingly, younger Americans were much more likely to report greater red meat consumption (25%) than older respondents (10%). There has been a shift around wealth too, with lower-income Americans likely to report eating more red meat until 2021, before being eclipsed by those with higher incomes.
As for the number of people eating meatless diets, this amounts to an average of 5% over the years, while flexitarians have increased from 2% to 7% from 2019-22. “Low adoption of plant-rich dietary patterns may be due to a lack of consumer awareness of these dietary patterns or knowledge of their health benefits,” the study suggested, adding that taste disparities and food access also play a role here.
The researchers highlight a need for “the provision of greater consumer education by nutrition and health professionals regarding the health, environmental, and animal welfare benefits of adopting such pattern”, pointing to campaigns like Veganuary and Have a Plant, which encourage increased plant-based eating.
Sustainability the lowest food priority for Americans
Courtesy: Nutrients
The report puts a further spotlight on the disconnect between food and climate change in the US. Between 2012 and 2018, sustainability was the least important factor influencing purchasing decisions, behind taste, health, price and convenience. Only 37% of Americans chose it – and this fell even further when the wording was changed to ‘environmental sustainability’, affecting just 32% of consumers.
About 65% of consumers said they give some thought to sustainability in 2022, but only half (51%) believe their food purchases have an impact on the climate – this increased with younger generations. When asked explicitly whether buying sustainably produced products was important, 75% said yes in 2016, but this dropped to 58% by 2021.
The findings display a lack of awareness around food sustainability in the US. About 64% said it’s hard for consumers to know whether their food choices were sustainable, and 61% agreed that this information would have a greater influence on their choices if it were easier to find. About a quarter of Americans said they purposely purchased foods labelled ‘organic’ (27%) or ‘locally sourced’ (26%), which declined to 20% for ‘environmentally friendly’ and just 16% for ‘plant-based’.
Among the respondents identifying sustainable food production as important, recyclable packaging (46%) and labels that indicated products are sustainably sourced (44%), locally grown (42%), and non-GMO (38%) were the most influential characteristics. Additionally, consumers believed a product labelled as having a ‘small carbon footprint’ (33%) or one produced in a sustainable way (38%) is healthier than a non-sustainable counterpart. Likewise, 43% felt a food labelled ‘plant-based’ was healthier than an identical alternative.
“Nutrition and health professionals, advocates, and civil society should encourage the food and beverage industry to adopt independent sustainability labelling schemes based on clearly defined criteria certified by third-party organisations,” the study noted, adding that taxes on red and processed meats, subsidies for low-carbon and whole-plant foods, and making planet-friendly options the default at food outlets could nudge consumers towards more sustainable diets.
The authors said greater action was needed from government leaders, health and nutrition professionals, as well as the food and beverage industry itself to adopt plant-rich diets and reduce red and processed meat consumption. Stanley is now examining the media narrative around plant-based diets, including those that encourage or discourage these foods. “Too often corporations will place the responsibility on individuals, but Americans need a supportive food and beverage environment to make changes,” she said.
“We can’t expect consumers to make sustainable choices if they don’t know the impacts of their purchases. We need to be doing more collectively to educate Americans on the benefits of plant-rich dietary patterns and to provide an environment where making healthy and sustainable purchases is the default choice.”
Parisian plant-based whole-cut meat producer Umiami has opened a commercial-scale facility in the Alsace region, backed by financing from the French government, the Grand Est area, as well as the EU. It plans to launch its chicken fillet on supermarket shelves in France this year.
In the presence of government officials, regional representatives and local leaders, Umiami this week inaugurated its new 14,000 sq m facility to produce whole-cut meat alternatives on a commercial scale and enable its European and North American expansion.
It comes 14 months after the startup announced the takeover of the former Unilever factory near Strasbourg in France’s Alsace region, which has been rehabilitated through a €38M ($41.3M) investment. This includes €7.5M ($8.2M) in financing from the Sociétés de Projets Industriels (SPI) fund – overseen by Bpifrance for the French government as part of the France 2030 economic investment plan – as well as €1.5M ($1.6M) each from the Grand Est Region and the EU’s European Regional Development Fund.
The result of three years of development and scaling up, the factory employs 53 people and can produce 7,500 tonnes of plant-based meat annually, which is slated to increase to 20,000 tonnes eventually. It will allow Umiami to expand its presence in Europe and North America, with plans to launch its soy-protein-based whole-cut chicken into French retail this year.
“The opening of our factory in Alsace represents the culmination of years of innovation, research and dedication to transforming the food industry,” co-founders Tristan Maurel, Martin Habfast and Clémence Pedraza said in a joint statement. “We sincerely thank our partners, teams, and communities for their support as we work towards a more sustainable and ethical future in food.”
Creating local jobs with clean-label vegan chicken
Courtesy: Umiami
Umiami, which has raised €100M ($107M) in total investment to date, had been operating in an R&D pilot plant in the Paris region since 2022, which is now a “centre of innovation that allows our R&D team to innovate and work on new projects”, Maurel and Habfast told Green Queen. Having previously outlined its goal to be at the centre of the region’s reindustrialisation and creation of local jobs, the startup says the new facility is “strategically positioned in the heart of Europe”.
“The inauguration of this first factory marks a pivotal moment in Umiami’s journey, following years of development of a unique technology, and illustrates the ambitions of the SME and industrial startups plan that we are supporting,” said Nicolas Dufourcq, executive director of Bpifrance. “Over and above the challenges of reindustrialisation in the Alsace region, the company is developing innovations that will help to promote our agri-food expertise, taking into account the challenges of a low-carbon transition, and we are proud to have supported it throughout the various phases of its development.”
Franck Leroy, president of the Grand Est region, added: “The establishment of the UMIAMI factory in the Grand Est region represents a substantial uplift for our area. Beyond job creation, this initiative showcases our commitment to fostering economic growth in our communities and driving forward the ecological transition.”
Umami makes whole-cut meat and fish alternatives through its proprietary plant-based meat texturising tech, called “umisation”. The brand previously told Green Queen that this technology “perfectly mimics the taste and texture of meat and fish, with equivalent nutritional value”, with the resulting meat product containing fewer than 10 ingredients.
“Umisation is an innovative protein texturing technology that is unique and specific to Umiami. It is the world’s first-ever process to be able to create – on a large scale – plant-based fillets that resemble pieces of animal meat: both in taste and texture,” a spokesperson said in October. “This technology is the result of several years’ research and development, and uses plant matrices to produce a fibrous texture and control the size, direction and thickness of the resulting fibres.”
They added: “As well as producing better texture, umisation has the advantage of offering a minimally processed product from a very short list of ingredients. The procedure now makes it possible to produce a whole, 100% plant-based thick fillet, with fibres resembling those of meat and reproducing that unique, gourmet sensation mouthfeel.”
International expansion amid a tough climate for plant-based
Courtesy: Umiami
Umiami’s product is already available in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy under a white label. And in August, it launched under its own brand name for the first time at 120 Coop stores in Switzerland. This year, it plans to move into retail in its home market, and expand into the US, which it has referred to as a “more developed market for plant-based meat alternatives”.
Whole cuts are touted as the “holy grail” of plant-based meat, delivering a more realistic texture by recreating animal muscle fibres, as well as a more rounded flavour. There are many companies creating such products, including Chunk Foods (US), Juicy Marbles (Slovenia), Redefine Meat (Israel), Libre Foods (Spain), Green Rebel (Indonesia) and Revo Foods (Austria), among others.
These products will appeal to the 57% of French consumers reducing their meat consumption, as a large EU-backed survey last year found. For these people, health is the primary motivator for cutting back on meat, and it’s also their main barrier towards eating more plant-based meat – this is a hurdle Umiami will be hoping to overcome through its texturising tech, which removes the need for any texturising agents or “controversial additives” to make a clean-label product. Shorter ingredient lists and minimal processing are important to consumers, given that 57% of Europeans avoid plant-based meats due to their ultra-processed nature.
According to alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute Europe, France is Europe’s fifth-largest plant-based market, with sales of meat alternatives growing by 17% from 2020-22. One survey from 2022 showed that 22% more consumers included more plant proteins in their diets from 2021-22, while 41% considered vegan food the third most important protein source, after meat and eggs (but above fish). Plus, a 2021 Kantar World Panel study revealed that flexitarians had nearly doubled in France, accounting for 25% in 2015, and 49% in 2021.
Umiami’s progress also comes on the backdrop of wider challenges for the plant-based industry, where sales have declined and companies have ceased operations in the last couple of years. In fact, global funding for food tech halved in 2023 from the year before. Asked about the plant-based industry’s challenges and future, Maurel and Habfast reiterated the importance of health.
“The biggest challenge is to provide good products to consumers by understanding their needs,” they said. “We are in a new area for plant-based products and it’s very important to provide a transparent list of ingredients and clean-label products.”
Australian hyper-fermentation company Cauldron Ferm has secured AU$9.5M ($6.25M) in Series A funding to build a large-scale facility to manufacture high-value ingredients through precision fermentation.
A year after closing a large AU$10.5M ($7M) seed financing round, Cauldron Ferm has raised a further AU$9.5M ($6.25M) in its Series A round, which was led by Horizons Ventures, with participation from existing investor Main Sequence, alongside SOSV and In-Q-Tel (IQT).
The startup’s manufacturing platform enables partners to produce high-value ingredients using precision fermentation in a continuous, more efficient process. It is the only business approved to manufacture precision-fermented protein ingredients at scale in Australia. The latest investment will enable the company to support “faster-than-expected customer growth, build robust proof cases around the application of its hyper-fermentation technology, and finalise partners and plans for a 500,000-litre facility”.
“Precision fermentation is an amazing technology, because it enables bio-based production of a wide range of products with diverse applications,” said Horizons Ventures’ Chis Liu. “To date, the technology has been hamstrung by its costs compared to conventional production methods, but Cauldron’s unique solution significantly improves the competitiveness of precision fermentation both in capital and operating expenditure.”
Continuous fermentation produces more proteins for cheaper
Courtesy: Cauldron Ferm
Founded in 2022, Cauldron’s hyper-fermentation tech is built on 35 years of R&D from Agritechnology, where co-founder and CEO Michele Stansfield worked for over a decade. In fact, the reason why its seed round was larger than the Series A is because it was used to buy out Agritechnology’s precision fermentation IP last year. The company’s tech involves a novel bioreactor design and proprietary growth medium formulation, which improve the economics of large-scale fermentation production by five times compared to the current industry standard.
The key is that this technology can run continuous fermentation, compared to the short-term batch production that’s widely in use. The company has successfully run a 10,000-litre production system for protein ingredients continuously for eight months without any contamination or any “genetic drift” of microbes, which are two of the biggest challenges of running long-term fermentation. This was facilitated by approval from Australia’s Office of the Gene Technology Regulatory.
This hyper-fermentation process allows the startup to outproduce batch systems that are five times larger with its smaller, cheaper bioreactors. It is currently operating out of a facility with a 25,000-litre fermentation capacity in Orange, New South Wales, but the latest capital injection will accelerate its plans for a 500,000-litre site. The longer-term plan is to build a large network of precision fermentation facilities globally for bio-based product manufacturing.
“Cauldron has proven its precision fermentation at an industrially relevant scale, unlocking a significant decrease – between 30% and 50% – in the cost of goods for our customers vs traditional batch fermentation,” said Stansfield. “From biofuels and agriculture to cosmetics and chemicals, the opportunities are immense, and with the support of our incredible investors, we’re poised to capitalise on them.”
Olivia Jones, director at IQT, said: “Food insecurity and competition among countries to control resources is a real risk. The technology Cauldron has created in enabling alternative ways of producing food, proteins, and materials on an industrial scale will be game-changing.”
Cauldron is already working with global commercial partners through its current plant in Orange, but plans to raise more funds as part of a Series B round by the end of the year to fund the new facility. It will help the company offer dairy ingredients to food manufacturers that could eventually satisfy the growing demand for dairy proteins globally at a competitive price, according to Australian alternative protein think tank Food Frontier.
“This development is not a new project or R&D experiment, it is a pathway to market success for Australia’s precision fermentation food companies who have needed access to larger facilities,” explained Food Frontier CEO Simon Eassom. “This not only opens the door for Australian food ingredient manufacturers, but also opens the door for Australia to exploit brand new industry growth and become a world leader in the precision fermentation field.”
Po Bronson, general partner at SOSV and managing director of IndieBio, called Stansfield and Cauldron’s long-run fermentation prowess “unparalleled”. She added: “The benefits of the technology – the ability to continuously produce, up to 50% lower net unit costs, and 20% more output with 45% less capex – dismantle a major obstacle for the industry and position the company as a critical manufacturing partner for companies building a more sustainable future.”
There are only a handful of precision fermentation companies in Australia and New Zealand, including Eden Brew, Daisy Lab and All G Foods. So while it’s still a young industry, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation – Australia’s science agency – forecasts that it will reach a value of $1.45B by the end of the decade.
Food Frontier believes Cauldron’s new infrastructure will only go on to help the country’s sector realise this potential, noting that if Australia has enough capability and capacity, international manufacturers will have the option of sourcing ingredients from down under.
“Food ingredients made from precision fermentation might be new now, but they will become the norm around the world for producing foods using dairy proteins and fats without the animal to improve performance and flavour in milk derivatives, cheeses, and products like plant-based meats,” said Eassom. “Cauldron Ferm has enabled the path forward for producing ingredients made from precision fermentation to be cheaper to use in food production than their animal-based counterparts and meet future protein demand in a much more environmentally sustainable way.”
