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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

alt protein

Matrix Meats, Maker of Alt-Meat Scaffolding Tech, Raises Seed Funding

Matrix Meats, a Columbus, Ohio-based maker of proprietary technology for scaffolding used in the creation of cultured meat, has raised a seed funding round according a press release sent to The Spoon.

The round, the amount of which was not disclosed, was led by Unovis Asset Management and, according to the press release, “further supported by CPT Capital, Siddhi Capital, Clear Current Capital and a special purpose vehicle (SPV) led by the Ikove Startup Nursery Fund.”

Ikove’s participation makes sense, as Matrix was born out of a partnership between Ikove Startup Nursery and Nanofiber Solutions. Nanofiber Solutions is the company which created the original process – called electrospinning – which Matrix Meats uses for its scaffolding tech.

Scaffolding, a critical building block in the creation of cultured meat, is used by cultured meat makers in bioreactors to provide a structure around which cells can replicate as they grow. Scaffolding can be made of synthetic or natural materials like plant-based or collagen. Matrix’s electrospinning technology is flexible and can use a variety of materials.

Here’s how Matrix CTO Jed Johnson described the company’s business back in an interview with the Spoon in the summer:

“It’s like the SaaS model, but instead of software as a service, it’s scaffold as a service,” said Johnson, “And we do that because we’re trying to design custom proprietary scaffold for each partner or each customer. Rather than take something off the shelf, like a cytodex bead, which is a standard microcarrier plastic bead that the pharmaceutical world uses, we’re developing custom scaffolds for for each of our partners. That’s because everyone in the culture meatspace is trying to carve out their sort of niche.”

According to the announcement, Matrix is currently working with 14 cultivated meat makers from seven different countries.

“We believe that our technology is an integral part of allowing the cultivated meat market to mature,” said Matrix Meats CEO Eric Jenkusky in the release. “Our innovative and programmable electro-spun nano-fiber scaffolds which replicate the extra cellular matrix of living organisms is backed by 50 awarded and pending patents. We will be expanding our efforts to assist our client/partners with accelerating their path to market.” 

Bee Honey is the Latest Animal-Free Food To Come From Precision Fermentation

Ahh, the magic of fermentation.

Over the past couple of years, the age-old process that brought us beer, soy sauce and kombucha has become suddenly sexy as it’s taken on new power through innovative startups trying to reinvent our food system.

While old-school fermentation continues to be a highly scaled workhorse, a new group of startups now use fermentation in innovative new ways that allow them to replicate proteins and other food compounds normally sourced from animals. In other words, they’re making animal products without the actual animal.

The end-result is products like Perfect Day’s ice cream or New Culture’s cheese that replicate the taste and experience of food produced the old fashioned way, on farms and through industrial production, without the need for animals.

And now, the miracle of precision fermentation is bringing us a new analog for a food that is particularly in peril: bee honey.

A startup by the name of Melibio wants to create bee honey using microbial fermentation technology. The “honey,” which company CEO Darko Mandich says “resembles the taste, the texture, and the viscosity of bee-made honey,” will be made by replicating the process used to create bee honey.

Why a honey alternative? As most know at this point, the honey bee population has been in precipitous decline over the past decade. Climate change, pesticides and, yes, murder hornets all continue to pose a threat to honey bees and the $7 billion honey industry.

Of course, creating biosynthesized honey won’t replace honey bees themselves. The declining bee population remains a problem, especially given the larger role of bees as pollinators To help us there, we may have to rely on technology Hail Maries like robotic bee drones or bubbles to solve the problem.

So how soon will it before we can taste Melibio’s bee honey without the bee? According to Mandich, the company plans to launch their honey replacement sometime next year and that 14 companies have signed letters of intent to use the product.

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The UK Launches Nine Ag and Food Tech Projects, Including ‘Air Protein’ Consortium Called REACT-FIRST

Today the United Kingdom announced a total of nine projects that will receive a total of £24 million (~$30 million USD) in funding to help accelerate the advancement of zero-emission farming and greater food sovereignty within the UK.

The organization leading the overall effort is UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) under what is called the Transforming Food Production challenge. Per today’s announcement, the challenge “aims to set food production systems on the trajectory to net zero emissions by 2040 producing food in ways that are more efficient, resilient and sustainable.”

One of the new projects that will receive funding is called REACT-FIRST, a consortium led by air protein startup Deep Branch Biotechnology. REACT-FIRST will build a scalable route towards protein generation using CO2 inputs and a process generally described by the industry as gas fermentation. The initiative will be comprised of 10 industry and academic partners that will essentially build out a research and scale protein value chain around Deep Branch’s technology.

This value chain and its various partners will look something like the graphic above, which was provided by REACT-FIRST. In this new scaled value chain, Drax, a single-site renewable energy generator will provide captured CO2 and Deep Branch’s technology will convert it to into a novel single-cell protein called Proton.

From there, the Proton SCP will either be converted to fish or poultry feeds with the help of BioMar (large aquafeed producer) or AB Agri (large poultry feed producer). Researchers from the University of Stirling and Nottingham Trent University will work on nutrition assessment. Retailer Sainsbury and others develop ways to scale the production of this new feed.

Deep Branch is one of a small cohort of new startups that have launched over the past few years focused on developing protein using a process called gas fermentation (check out Spoon Plus report on the topic here). Others include Air Protein, Solar Foods and NovoNutrients. Last year, the European Space Agency started working with Solar Foods to develop the technology for use in space to feed astronauts.

Other projects within this broad initiative from the United Kingdom include everything from autonomous robotic farming systems (Robot Highways led by Saga Robotics) to hydroponic grow systems (Production at the Point of Consumption led by Evogro) to new algae grow systems for food production in deserts (AGRI-SATT led by Feed Algae). Each project consists of a funding for research and a variety of partners to help accelerate the time to market and scaling of the technologies.

Singapore to Allocate $40M to Help Agtech and Aquaculture Startups Grow More Local Food

Singapore agtech is about to get an investment shot in arm, one that could give the whole world a clearer vision of alternative farming’s role in our future food system. Enterprise Singapore, the government agency committed to startups, said last week it will invest roughly $40 million USD into agtech and aquaculture companies, according to AgFunder News. 

Koh Poh Koon, Singapore’s senior minister for trade and industry, said during the announcement that “Using agritech can help to make [Singapore’s] food supplies more resilient by building a bigger margin of local food capacity.”

Sinapore relies on imports for about 90 percent of its food. As the pandemic has shown us, that reliance on external sources can be problematic if the supply chain gets disrupted. The city-state already has one initiative in place to address this, the “30 by 30” program, which aims to have 30 percent of Singapore’s food produced domestically by 2030. 

The newly announced funding will go towards agtech and aquaculture startups that apply through the Singapore government’s Business Grants Portal. 

Singapore has become something of a hotbed in the last couple years for food tech, especially when it comes to alternative proteins and alternative farming methods. Last year, the city-state’s National Research Foundation allocated $535 million (USD) to increase R&D efforts in cell therapy manufacturing, digital technology, and sustainable urban food production. Food-focused accelerators like GROW’s Singapore Food Bowl program are also emerging as a resource for startups. Meanwhile, individual companies are also developing ways to make Singaporean food more local, from SinGrow’s proprietary strawberries, to Turtle Tree Labs’ cultured human breastmilk.

Those uses of alternative farming and food production could be a clue for the rest of the world about how technologies like high-tech farming systems, post-harvest technology, and raising alternative protein sources fit into the broader picture of the future food system. Many of these technologies are nascent and have yet to prove themselves economically scalable. If Singapore can use them to meet its “30 by 30” goal and beyond, it could provide a blueprint for the rest of the world as the population increases and demand for local food production grows.

The Latest Ingredient For Alt-Protein? Wood.

Over the last few years, everything from chickpea to microbes found in the air to bugs (lots of bugs) has been put forth as a new source of alt-protein.

But what about wood?

According to Arbiom, an agtech ingredient development company, wood is ready for prime time as a human-consumable source of protein. In a press release, the company said its first commercialized product, SylPro, recently completed a proof-of-concept study in which it replaced a variety of plant-based alternatives such as soy, pea and wheat gluten “without compromising taste or product quality”.

Arbiom says that SylPro could replace plant-based alternatives like wheat, which can act as an allergen, in functional roles such as binding.

Arbiom’s technology works by converting wood substrates into single-cell protein microorganisms through the process of fermentation. Up to this point, the technology had been used to make only animal feed, but this month’s news is the first indication that Arbiom’s technology can be used to convert wood into human food.

The company’s been working on making wood a source of protein for years. It first created a wood pre-treatment concept lab in 2011 and in 2017, it formed the European Union funded SYLFEED Consortium with a €9M grant to develop a wood-to-food ecosystem built around Arbiom’s technology.

There’s no doubt that trees could be a plentiful source of input material when it comes to making food, but any talk of wood as a food source needs to be balanced against concerns of deforestation. Deforestation continues to be a concern around the world, mostly due to the use of trees as construction material, fuel, and through clearing for agriculture. According to Arbiom, SylPro’s impact would be negligible in part because it gets its raw material from excess material derived from the wood processing and paper production industry.

Looking forward, wood might make it into other types besides your plant-based burger. SylPro is part of another European Union project launched last year called Next-Gen Proteins that is looking to put alternative non-animal protein inputs into products like baked goods, sports nutrition and 3D printed foods.