Melt&Marble, formerly known as Biopetrolia, announced today that it has raised a €750,000 (~$876,000 USD) seed round to further develop its fermentation-based fats for plant-based foods. Nordic FoodTech VC led the round with participation from Paulig’s venture arm PINC, Purple Orange Ventures, and Chalmers Ventures.
In addition to the funding, the company is also debuting its new name, branding and direction. Under its previous name Biopetrolia, Melt&Marble used fermentation to create advanced biofuels. But as Anastasia Krivoruchko, Co-Founder and CEO of Melt&Marble explained to me via video chat this week, “We were looking at what our technology could do and saw we produce fatty acids at very high levels.” Additionally, not only were they producing fatty acids, but they could also adjusts the fermented fats to produce a variety of outcomes.
Melt&Marble is an ingredient company, so it will use this ability to manipulate fermented fats to produce a wide range of fats for other plant-based meat manufacturers. It can create fats specifically for plant-based beef, pork other meat analogues. It can also adapt its fat to work better with specific plant-based proteins such as soy, or peas. Because it is tweaking these compounds from the ground up, Melt&Marble can also change the nature of the fats created to deliver different textures, melting points, or even replace bad fats with healthier ones.
Plant-based proteins grab all the headlines, but developing the right kind of fats to go with it is equally as important for meat analogues. Other companies looking to develop plant-based fats include Australia’s Nourish Ingredients, which also uses fermentation to create fats, and Motif Foodworks, which was developing plant-based fats in partnership with the University of Guleph in Canada.
Meat&Marble itself is spun out of research done at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. Krivoruchko said that the company expects to have its first prototype done by the end of the year.
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