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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Precision Fermentation

Alt Protein Round-Up: Cultured Seafood in Europe, Precision Fermentation in Silicon Valley

The Good Food Institute released a new report that shared in the first half of 2021, alternative seafood companies raised a total of $116 million in funding, compared to $26 million in all of 2020. In contrast, last year saw a 23 percent increase in U.S.-based alternative seafood sales.

In addition to this report on alternative seafood, we’ve got news on BlueNalu, Meatable, Change Foods, Enough, and a new cultured food hub in Switzerland.

BlueNalu to bring cultured seafood to Europe

BlueNalu announced this week that it would explore the distribution of its cell-based seafood throughout Europe in partnership with frozen food company Nomad Foods. According to the two companies, this is the first agreement between a cultured protein company and a consumer packaged goods company in Europe. BlueNalu did not disclose what seafood analogs it would supply or when distribution throughout Europe would occur.

Givaudan, Bühler, and Migros form the Cultured Food Innovation Hub

Givaudan, Bühler, and Migros, three Swedish corporations, have partnered to open the Cultured Food Innovation Hub outside of Zürich, Switzerland. The hub, which is set to open in 2022, will assist existing start-ups in the precision fermentation and cultured meat and seafood space to develop and commercialize their products. The facilities will include biofermentation capabilities and a product development lab.

Meatable enters joint development agreement with DSM

Dutch cultured meat start-up Meatable and Royal DSM, a nutrition tech company, will work together to reduce the cost of growth medium used in cultivated meat production. Growth medium is a liquid that contains proteins, growth factors, and vitamins that cells need to grow, and it is often the priciest component used in creating cultivated meat. In addition to working on growth medium, the companies “will focus on the development of meat-like taste and texture of the final product, which are important factors influencing the purchase decision of consumers.”

Change Foods open up R&D facilities in Silicon Valley

Precision fermentation start-up Change Foods announced it has opened up new R&D facilities in life science incubator BioCube. BioCube has established itself as one of the longest-running and well-respected incubators in Silicon Valley, with alumni such as Impossible Foods. Change Foods has set its sights on creating vegan cheese with the same stretch and melt of real cheese as its first product, and will use its new facilities at BioCube to accelerate those efforts.

Enough begins construction on world’s largest alt. protein facility

Scotland-based Enough (previously 3F Bio) produces an alternative protein made from mycelium called ABUNDA. The company just started construction on a 15,000 square meter factory in the Netherlands, which according to the press release, is set to be the largest factory for alternative protein in the world. The production facility will be able to produce approxiameltely 10,000 metric tons of mycoprotein per year.

Formo Raises $50 Million to Make Animal-Free Cheese With Precision Fermentation

Berlin-based Formo announced today it had raised $50 million in Series A funding. The investment in the maker of animal-free cheese was led by EQT Ventures, with Elevat3 Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.

The company, which started out as Legendairy Foods but rebranded earlier this year, says it will use the new cash to build a pilot plant, fast-track commercial production, and expand its science team.

From the release:

“With the resulting increase in R&D capacity, Formo plans to expand its product portfolio to represent a wide variety of European dairy specialties such as mozzarella and ricotta, with techniques designed in collaboration with artisan cheesemakers.“

Formo uses a precision fermentation process to make animal-free dairy cheese with animal identical proteins. For cheese, this means first encoding DNA into microorganisms to produce casein and whey. From there, they feed the microbes until they produce enough protein, which is then harvested and combined with other ingredients to make cheese.

“Formo domesticates microorganisms instead of cows, using precision fermentation to create nature-identical dairy products. Formo’s cheeses have the same taste, texture, and functional properties as animal-derived cheeses, but come at a substantially lower cost for the environment, human health, and animal welfare. With microorganisms being up to 20 times more efficient than cows at converting feed into food, Formo can already undercut consumers’ willingness to pay at commercial production scale.“

The company says the $50 million is Europe’s largest series A food tech investment to date. This is true if we’re not counting restaurant tech (and Karma Kitchen’s $317 million series A), but no matter how you slice it, Formo’s latest is impressive and certainly the largest we’ve seen for a precision fermentation startup in Europe.

Givaudan Partners With Ginkgo Bioworks to Increase Portfolio of Ingredients

This week Swiss flavor giant Givaudan announced it has partnered with synthetic biology platform company Ginkgo Bioworks to develop a new series of ingredients.

According to the announcement, Givaudan will “leverage Ginkgo’s long-established expertise in enabling companies to develop bio-based products to produce a number of innovative and sustainable ingredients through fermentation.”

Ginkgo Bioworks, which gained a national profile over the past year for its work to help accelerate the development of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, will use the same fermentation expertise and synthetic biology “foundry” that Moderna used to help Givaudan map the growth pathways of potential new ingredients. Ginkgo’s fermentation platform, which utilizes a bioreactor system called the Sartorius ambr250, leverages automation to run hundreds of benchtop bioreactors to accelerate the optimization process. According to the announcement, Givaudan will use this system to explore potential scale-up paths for numerous ingredients, including “those that are only available in minute quantities in nature.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Givaudan, the world’s largest flavor and fragrance conglomerate, would embrace synthetic biology as new terrain to explore for flavor development. Flavor companies are, at their core, ingredient hunters, employing armies of scouts and trend watchers around the world to identify new flavors as they emerge. Synthetic biology represents a new way to extract potentially exotic flavors and bring them to market faster in a way that was not possible before.

At first glance, one might ask why Givaudan partnered with Ginkgo and not Motif Foodworks, Ginkgo’s plant-based ingredient spinout. The answer lies in the fact the partnership is centered largely around Ginkgo’s precision fermentation platform, which even Motif relies on for development and scale-up optimization of new ingredients. Ginkgo also makes sense since the partnership goes beyond just food ingredients, as the two will also develop ingredients for other industries such as cosmetics and perfumes.