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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

alternative protein

Equinom Raises $20M Series C Round for Seed Breeding Tech

Israel-based Equinom announced today it has raised a $20 million Series C funding round led by Phoenix. The round also included participation from Fortissimo, Trendlines, Maverick, and BASF, and brings Equinom’s total funding to $27.6 million.

Equinom uses AI to improve upon the existing nutrition of seeds, including a seed’s protein content. Through its natural non-GMO breeding process, seeds with desired traits are selected and then bred. Equinom’s “Product Profiler” app allows food companies to select what traits they want in a particular seed for the product they are developing. According to its website, the company is working with soy, yellow, pea, sesame, and will offer boosted versions of chickpeas, mung beans, quinoa, cowpeas, and fava beans in the future. Across the world, Equinom is growing over 100,000 acres of these crops.

With this most recent round of capital, Equinom will expand its operations in marketing, research, development, and sales. At the beginning of May, the company partnered with Dipasa, a leading producer of sesame seeds, to launch a new variety of high protein sesame seeds. In addition to Dispasa, Equinom has had contracts with major food companies like Sabra and Roquette to improve upon the nutrition content of seed for use in plant-based foods.

Seeds, nuts, and grains are more sustainable and efficient to produce than meat, yet a common complaint regarding plant-based ingredients is that they often do not have the same high protein content as meat. It’s therefore a pressing issue to find nutrient-dense crops that can support a population that will reach 9.7 billion by 2050. Plant-based ingredients like chickpea, soy, peas, and lentils are nutrient-dense and contain a high protein content, but still fall short of the protein content found in a serving of, say, beef. By increasing protein content in these seeds, Equinom’s technology could prove valuable in helping feed more mouths with more nutritious and environmentally friendly food.

In the last quarter of 2021, Equinom is set to launch the highest pea protein concentrate available on the market, called “Smarter Pea Protein.”

Food Tech News: Vanillin Made From Plastic Waste, Plant-Based Pâté, and Strella Biotechnology’s Win

The sun is sweltering, the flowers are in full bloom, and food tech news is coming in hot. In this week’s roundup, we have news on the launch of a plant-based pâté, the winner of GS1 US Startup Lab Pitch Competition, scientists transforming used plastic into a food flavoring, and a fully compostable coffee pod.

Plant-based pâté launches in U.S.

Plantcraft shared in an email this week that its plant-based pâté has entered the U.S. market after launching in Erewhon’s (an organic grocer in the Los Angeles area) six locations. The plant-based pâté is made from a combination of ingredients including green banana flour, golden flax seeds, sunflower protein, and grapeseed oil. In the plant-based space, many companies produce meat analogs like burger patties, sausages, crumbles, and strips, but alternatives to charcuterie meats like pâté are uncommon. In addition to pâté, Plantcraft will also launch plant-based pepperoni slices, which will debut in August at the National Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you do not live near an Erewhon, Plantcraft will be making its pâté available for foodservice locations and on its website in the upcoming months.

Strella Biotechnology wins first prize in lab pitch competition

Strella Biotechnology is an ag-tech startup that uses sensors to measure produce maturity, and it was recently announced the winner of the third-annual GS1 US Startup Lab Pitch Competition. The startup won the first prize of $10,000 and will be writing a white paper with GS1 about supply chain practices and how technology can be used to improve them. The company has recently been focused on is expanding its apples and pear packing business, where it monitors the storage of these perishables for packers. Additionally, Strella has gotten involved in monitoring shipping containers traveling overseas filled with perishable produce. Katherine Sizov, the founder of Strella, said the company is currently hiring and looking to partner with more retail chains.

Scientists convert post consumer plastic to vanillin

A team of scientists from the University of Edinburgh has discovered a novel method of converting post-consumer PET plastic to vanillin, an organic compound often used as a flavoring agent in the food industry. For the conversion, the team engineered the bacteria E. coli to transform a molecule derived from PET, called terephthalic acid. This transformation resulted in the molecule that gives real vanilla its taste and smell. Vanillin, produced from various sources such as wood pulp, raw petrochemical materials, or biomass, is cheaper and easier to come by than real vanilla, which is a product of orchids. The researchers believe that the vanillin they produced could be consumed by humans, but more research needs to be conducted to confirm.

NEXE launches fully compostable coffee pods

NEXE Innovations, a material company that develops plant-based products, shared this week about the launch of its new coffee products packaged in compostable pods under the brand XOMA Superfoods. The coffee pods can be used in a Keurig, and varieties include mushroom-infused, MCT-infused, and high-fat Keto coffee. The pod packaging is made from plant fiber, compostable polymers, and a bamboo casing, and is fully compostable in as little as 35 days. NEXE encourages consumers to dispose of the pods in the green commercial composting bins, but also says that pods can be added to your backyard composting set up. The pods are currently available for purchase, and the Xoma variety pack consists of 12 pods that costs $11.99.

Aqua Cultured Foods Is Creating Whole Muscle Cuts of Seafood Using Fungi

Seafood is the most traded commodity in the world, and it is estimated that 85 percent of wild fish stocks are overfished or fully exploited. As a way to address the plethora of environmental issues found within the commercial seafood industry, startup Aqua Cultured Foods is developing alternative forms of seafood using fermentation.

The company, based in Chicago, Illinois, is in the process of developing whole muscle cuts of alternative seafood using fungi. I spoke on the phone this week with Anne Palermo, the CEO and founder of Aqua Cultured Foods, who was looking for a solution that could help feed the rapidly growing global population. She said, “The more I looked into fermentation, the more I thought that was the way to do it. You can create whole, bioavailable proteins that are very efficient to produce anywhere in the world.”

Using its fermentation process, Aqua Cultured Foods can produce a wide variety of seafood analogs — shrimp, white fish, ahi tuna, scallops, and calamari, to name a few. According to Palermo, the products will have the slippery and delicate texture found in many types of seafood, and will also contain the vitamin B12, which can sometimes be challenging to acquire naturally in a vegan or plant-based diet.

When asked about the process and tech behind developing the whole-muscle cuts of seafood, Palermo said she could not share much at the moment. The startup currently has three pending patents for its alternative seafood and the process behind it, including one for its proprietary fungi.

The Good Food Institute considers the plant-based seafood industry a white space, and this sector currently only accounts for 1 percent of total plant-based meat sales. There are so many different types and species of seafood, so at the moment there are seemingly endless possibilities for innovation in this space.

For alternative seafood, there are three different categories: plant-based, cultured, and fermentation. Aqua Cultured Foods seems to be really the only company in the fermentation category, but Prime Roots and Quorn each have one alternative seafood product (lobster ravioli and fish sticks). Blue Nalu, Wild Type, Shiok Meats, Avant Meats are a few companies that fall into the cultured meat category. The plant-based category includes Sophie’s Kitchen, New Waves Foods, Good Catch, and Hooked.

Popcorn shrimp will be the first product launched by Aqua Cultured Foods, but the release date of the product has yet to be announced. The whole-muscle cuts of seafood will be available at some point after the popcorn shrimp on retailer shelves.

Horizon Europe Allocates €32M for Sustainable Protein Research

Horizon Europe, a European Union funding program for research and innovation, announced today that it has €32 million in funding available for research into more sustainable protein options such as cultivated meat and plant-based alternatives. The program works to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and this is the largest funding package set aside specifically for sustainable proteins to date.

There are three project categories supported by Horizon Europe’s funding for researchers to take on:

  1. Fill in the gaps of nutrition, safety, and allergenicity of alternative proteins, and then assessing the environmental footprints of these products. Budget – €11 million.
  2. Develop sustainable protein crop systems and value chains with the facilitation of best practices between farmers
    Budget – €9 million
  3. Focus on food environments and aim to ensure that consumers are able to make healthy and sustainable food choices when at restaurants and supermarkets. Budget – €12 million

Food security is a global issue because of a continuously expanding population and climate change. By 2050, it is estimated that 9.7 billion people will inhabit the planet, yet the resources and land available for food production on Earth are finite. To feed this many people, we would have to double the current amount of food production. According to the Good Food Institute, plant-based meat alternatives use 47-99 percent less land than conventional meat. The same report by GFI stated that 77 percent of all available agricultural land is used for animal agriculture, yet animal agriculture only supplies 17 percent of the world’s food supply. This type of inefficiency would make it challenging to achieve the food requirements needed by 2050.

The Good Food Institute Europe, along with 21 other organizations, sent a letter to the European Commission imploring them to consider allocating funding for the research and development of more sustainable proteins. This isn’t the first time governments have stepped up to provide funding for this type of research. The Spanish government granted BioTech Foods €5.2 million ($6.3 million USD) at the beginning of 2021 for the company’s cultured meat project, which consisted of investigating the health benefits of cultured meat. NovaMeat also received €250,000 (~ $307,500 USD) in funding from the Spanish government, at the beginning of the year to further develop its 3D printed meat alternatives. In the U.S., UC Davis received a $3.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to research cultivated meat last September.

The Horizon Europe program will run until 2027, and those interested in applying for grant money through Horizon Europe for these three projects can apply here.

Motif FoodWorks Raises $226M to Improve the Taste of Plant-Based Proteins

Plant-based food tech company Motif FoodWorks has raised a whopping $226 million in Series B funding, according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. The round was co-led by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, through its Teachers’ Innovation Platform, and BlackRock. Rethink Food and existing investors also participated in the round. To date, Motif has raised $345 million.

The company says its new funds will go towards three areas: research and development; scaling and commercializing its food tech; and expanding its number of people and facilities.

Through all of these areas, Motif’s underlying goal is to improve plant-based foods by developing novel food ingredients that lead to better texture, mouthfeel, and taste in products. The company does this via a mix of microbial engineering and precision fermentation.

Motif, which was spun out of bioengineering platform Ginkgo Bioworks, moved into its own facility in the Boston Seaport area last year, where it is focusing on R&D efforts. Meanwhile, just last month, the company announced it had acquired extrudable fat technology from private research firm Coasun to use in mimicking fat textures in plant-based meats. Additionally, Gingko is licensing prolamin technology from the University of Guelph. The prolamin tech will improve the texture of plant-based cheese so that it can melt, bubble, and stretch as easily as its traditional counterpart. 

This massive Series B fundraise comes at a time when retail sales of plant-based foods surpassed $7 billion. Even so, there’s room for improvement. Research from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Earth Day Network found that 44 percent of consumers surveyed “don’t like the taste of plant-based foods.” However, two out of three said in the same research that they would be “willing to eat more plant-based foods instead of meat if plant-based foods tasted better than they do today.”

Fermentation technology, sometimes called “the third pillar” of alt protein, is a way to bridge the taste gap between traditional and plant-based meats. Ingredients made with biomass and/or precision fermentation can be combined with plant-based ingredients to achieve the kind of meat and dairy analogues that taste and feel as close to the real thing as possible.

Other companies, including Perfect Day, Change Foods, and Clara Foods are all working towards this goal, too.

Animal-Free Dairy Startup Change Foods Closes $2.1M Seed Round

Change Foods, a startup best known at this point for making animal-free cheese via a fermentation process, has closed an oversubscribed Seed round of $2.1 million. Investors include Plug and Play Ventures, Clear Current Capital, Canaccord Genuity, Better Bite Ventures, Jeff Dean, and GERBER-RAUTH, among others. To date, Change Foods has raised $3.1 million in funding, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The company, founded in 2019, has up to now been split between Palo Alto, California and Melbourne, Australia. In the wake of this new funding, Change Foods is setting up a new R&D facility in the San Francisco Bay Area and company founder David Bucca has already relocated there.   

The company plans to bring its first product — animal-free cheese — to market in 2023.

Precision fermentation is one method within the larger fermentation category. For Change Foods, involves fermenting microorganisms such as yeast or filamentous fungi with sugar to produce the cells for specific functional ingredients — fats, vitamins, flavoring agents, and enzymes, to name a few. (Precision fermentation is also used to create insulin.) Perfect Day and Impossible Foods are examples of major alt-protein companies that use this process to get their products.

An animal-free cheese made via this method has the potential to be one of the first animal-free cheeses to appeal to the non-vegan crowd. Up to now, numerous companies have tried their hand at plant-based cheeses. Few have gotten the flavor and texture close enough to the real thing to win over masses of consumers. Motif Foodworks, the food tech spinout of synthetic biology company Gingko Bioworks, is the other notable company developing cheese products through precision fermentation. 

Traditional cheese requires a significant amount of land and water to produce, puts it right up there with meat in terms of food items consumers should ideally cut back on or find outright replacements. To realistically counter that, alternatives will have to taste less like cashew or legumes and more like actual cheese. Precision fermentation may eventually be a highly efficient way to do this at scale, hence new investments like this one now going towards the space.

Green Rebel Foods Introduces Asia’s First Whole Cut Plant-Based Steak

Green Rebel Foods, an Indonesian-based alternative meat start-up, unveiled today that it has developed a plant-based whole cut steak, as well as an alternative chicken steak (h/t Green Queen). According to the company, this is the first whole-cut alternative steak option in Asia.

The Beefless Steak is made from a combination of soy protein, shiitake mushrooms, coconut oil, seaweed flour, and contains 12 grams of protein in a serving. The Chick’n’steak is not listed on the company’s website yet, so less information is available for this product; however, it is known that soy protein is the primary ingredient used. These two new innovations join Green Rebel’s wide portfolio of plant-based alternatives, including products like chickpea sausages, shroom balls, Chick’n katsu, and beefless black pepper chunks.

Plant-based steak is not just for vegetarians or vegans; there are several reasons why someone might want to avoid steak. Beef is generally considered the worst offender of all meats when it comes to releasing carbon emissions, and for every kilogram of beef produced, 60 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions are released. Additionally, steak is a red meat that if eaten often, can increase the risk for heart problems and certain cancers.

People still love steak, whether it be for the succulent, juicy texture or for the fact that it is in many ways a status symbol. For those who don’t consume meat, there is not really a whole cut, plant-based steak option on the market readily available for consumers to purchase. Meati trialed its mycelium-based steak last year at a few restaurants but has yet to make its products commercially available. MeaTech 3D announced this past May that it has plans to develop a whole cut cell-based steak, but did not offer a concrete timeline on this. In February 2021, Aleph Farms shared that it had created a cultivated 3D-bioprinted ribeye steak, though the company did not say whether or not it had plans to commercialize this product anytime soon.

Green Rebel’s Beefless steak is now available for purchase on its website (only for those living in Indonesia), and one package costs Rp 75.000 (~$5.26 USD), while the Chick’n’steak will be added to the site in July. ABUBA Steak, a chain with 29 locations in Indonesia, and Pepper Lunch, a fast-food steak house, will incorporate the alternative steak products into several menu items this month.

The Very Good Butchers Will Ship Plant-Based Meats Directly to Your House

The Very Good Butchers, based in Vancouver, B.C, is a large player in the Canadian plant-based space that produces a wide variety of alternative protein products. The company recently reached out to me just in time for BBQ season to see if I wanted to try one of its vegan butcher boxes, and I was intrigued by the offer and decided to try it out.

Wheat gluten is the primary ingredient in most of The Very Good Butchers’ meat alternative products, as well as other plant-based ingredients like adzuki beans, kidney beans, mushrooms, jackfruit, and a variety of vegetables. This year, The Very Good Butchers acquired The Cultured Nut, which produces artisanal vegan cheeses, cream cheese spreads, and butter. The Very Good Butchers currently offer Cultured Nut’s products in a few of their boxes, and will eventually change Cultured Nut’s name to The Very Good Cheese Company.

The “butcher box” I received contained plant-based bangers (sausages), burger patties, jackfruit taco meat, and pepperoni. I’ll start out by saying that I am normally not a fan of seitan or wheat-based meat alternatives due to the texture and how dense these products feel. What I enjoyed most was the umami and smokey flavors of each of the alternative meats, and the fact that they were high in protein. What I did not like was how some of the products, like the bangers specifically, had a rubbery texture, which I attribute to the wheat gluten.

My favorite product was the alternative pepperoni, which had a strong fennel flavor and a slightly spicy kick; I sliced this on top of pizza. The plant-based burger patties had a great smokey flavor and came precooked with grill marks. Since the burger was quite dense, I opted to eat it over greens rather than in a bun. I ate the bangers alone, but I think I would have enjoyed them more eaten hot dog style in a bun with ketchup and mustard. The jackfruit taco stuffers were well-seasoned and provided a quick and easy meal inside a corn tortilla (this product would also be good as a burrito filling).

Not having to leave my house to gather up these plant-based meats was convenient, and I enjoyed the novelty of opening a box laden with vegan goods. Direct-to-consumer home delivery accelerated after the start of the pandemic, and companies like Chipotle and PepsiCo. began offering this type of service. As the world slowly opens back up and the “post-pandemic” world is seemingly in site, D2C services are still expected to grow by nearly 20 percent this year.

In addition to The Very Good Butchers, a few other plant-based meat companies offer direct-top-consumer home delivery. Last year when D2C services were surging, both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods launched their own direct to consumer platforms to allow customers to buy its products in bulk.

The plant-based space has come a long way in terms of creating products that closely emulate their meat counterparts. The Very Good Butchers do a good job of demonstrating of how plant-based ingredients can be transformed into a diversity of meat analogs. Although some plant-based alternatives aren’t exactly on par with what they are trying to replicate, it is still impressive to see what ingredients like wheat, soy, peas, and legumes can create. For many people seeking plant-based based alternatives, myself included, we are not looking for an exact replica of meat, but simply a high protein alternative that tastes good.

If you’re interested in checking out The Very Good Butcher’s alt-meat boxes, they are available on the company’s website. The smallest box starts at $50 (enough for 13+ meals), and the largest box costs $99 (enough for 28+ meals).

Float Foods Secures $2.2M for Alternative Whole Egg Product

Singapore-based Float Foods, which produces whole plant-based eggs, announced today that it has raised $2.2 million SGD (~$1.66 million USD). This round of funding was led by both DSG Consumer Partners and Insignia Ventures, with participation from Teja Ventures Apricot Capital, Baksh Capital, Agrocorp Ventures, Water Tiger Investments, and Ebb & Flow. In addition to this recent round, Float Foods previously raised an undisclosed amount of capital through a grant from the Temasek Foundation in March of this year.

The startup’s proprietary product is called OnlyEg, which is made from a base of legumes. The alternative egg contains both a yellow yolk and the whites like a regular egg, allowing it to function much like a regular egg in various applications.

One common concern with alternative protein products is that they do not have the same nutritional value as their animal counterpart. This can sometimes be true, however, Float Foods claims that its alternative egg contains as many vitamins and minerals as a chicken egg. The company also said it is improving upon the nutritional content of its OnlyEg before it launches.

There are not many other whole plant-based eggs on the market, and Float Foods mainly faces competition from companies making alternative eggs in liquid form. However, there is a company based in Singapore called OsomeFoods that recently launched an alternative whole, hardboiled egg product made from mycoprotein. Eat Just is building a factory in Singapore to expand availability of its liquid egg product throughout Asia.

OnlyEg is not yet available on the market, and Float Foods said that the product will likely launch next year. In addition to the alternative whole egg product, the company is also developing plant-based egg patties and shreds.

Better Meat Co. Completes Its Production Facility for Fermented Mycoprotein Ingredients

Plant-based ingredient maker Better Meat Co.’s new fermentation plant, which will produce the company’s mycoprotein ingredient Rhiza, is up and running as of today in Sacramento, California, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

Rhiza is a fungi-based protein analogue with a naturally meaty texture and neutral taste. Because it is a whole food, it requires less processing than, say, pea protein, to get a meat alternative customers would actually want to eat. Better Meat Co. says the product can be used either on its own, as a complete replacement for meat, or as a “meat enhancer” that gets blended with traditional protein. 

To get Rhiza, the company uses a fermentation process where fungi feeds on a basic crop such as a potato to create a biomass that can be harvested with minimal processing. The process is similar to those of Quorn or Enough, companies that also use fermentation-based mycoprotein production. 

Since Better Meat Co. is a business-to-business company, it will sell Rhiza to food companies that can use it in their own products. Adding an ingredient like Rhiza to an existing meat product can improve the latter’s overall nutritional profile. For example, it could reduce the amount of cholesterol typically found in a traditional burger patty. The company also claims its product has more iron than traditional beef, more protein than eggs, and more fiber than oats.

The new facility in Sacramento will include both lab and office space. It will primarily serve as a R&D facility in addition to producing “thousands of pounds of finished product per month,” according to today’s news release. 

Food Tech News: Promising Mealworm Research, Miller Lite Shoezie, and Rewards for Eating Organic Yogurt

Throughout the week, we gathered some interesting tidbits of food tech news we wanted to share, including:

Study finds that mealworm protein and milk protein are similar

Researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands conducted a study on the nutritional value of mealworm protein and found that it shares similar properties to milk protein. Mealworm protein contains all nine amino acids, and like milk protein, facilitates muscle growth. Additionally, both are absorbed and digested in the body similarly. Ynsect, an insect food start-up, supplied the mealworms for the study. Various insects are commonly found in diets throughout the world, but Western culture certainly seems to shy away from this source of protein. Raising insects like mealworms is considered to be more sustainable than raising pork, cattle, and chicken because they use considerably less land and emit vastly fewer greenhouse gases. Mealworm milk anyone?

Stonyfield Organic will pay you to eat organic yogurt

Stonyfield Organic, producers of dairy products, announced that starting today (June 5th) it will pay people for choosing to eat organic yogurt products. To get in on this deal, you must post a photo to Instagram eating organic yogurt from any brand using the hashtag #YogurtTradeUp. In exchange, Stonyfield will ship you $5 Visa Prepaid Card, a case of 5.3 oz cups of Stonyfield yogurt, and a packet of sunflower seeds. The catch is that there is a limited supply of free yogurt (amount undisclosed) and the selfie must be uploaded between the times of 8 am – 8 pm EST. The company shared that it is hosting this to encourage consumers to see the value of eating organic products and how what we eat affects the environment.

Miller Lite releases the “shoezie” for Father’s Day

Miller Lite and New Balance partnered to create what they are calling a “Shoezie”, which is a combination of a shoe and beer koozie. The concept was created for the upcoming Father’s Day holiday, and aims to appeal to the fashion of middle-aged dads and their light beer-drinking habits. The design of the shoe is inspired by New Balance’s 624 Trainer, often considered a classic “dad” shoe. There will be a limited supply of the Shoezie, which is launching June 10th at 10 am on the Shoezie website.

Competition for an innovative vegan food service product

Copper Branch, a plant-based restaurant chain, and Vegan Women Summit are partnering to host the Plant-Powered Glow Up Contest, a product pitch competition that will award a food service contract to a vegan and women-led or founded business. Criteria set forth by the competition detailed that ideally the product will fit in with the Copper Branch menu, be healthy, differentiated, and aligned with the company’s mission. The winning product will become a menu item this Fall at select Copper Branch locations in the U.S. and Canada. The contest opened at the start of this week and will close on June 30th; it is free for anyone who meets the requirements to enter.

MeaTech 3D Files a Patent for Printing More Cultivated Meat

Bioprinting startup MeaTech 3D has filed a patent with the United States Patent Office (USPTO) it says could significantly improve the manufacturing process for its cultivated meat.

The Ness Ziona, Israel-based company has since 2018 been developing a method for cultivated meat that relies on 3D bioprinting. Cells are extracted from the animal (without harming it) and transferred to bioreactors, where they multiply before getting differentiated into different cell types, such as fat and muscle. That process is, with some variation, akin to just about any company developing cultivated meat right now.

Where MeaTech’s method starts to differ is when the bio-inks come into play. The bio-inks are formed from the cell types mentioned above, like muscle and fat, and scaffolding material, which provides structural support cells can adhere to as they grow and mature. Once the inks are loaded into a 3D bioprinter, they are printed to, in MeaTech’s own description, “assemble cells as they would be found in a conventional cut of muscle.” The printed product is incubated to form tissue and eventually become a full cut of meat that goes to the consumer. 

Needless to say, nobody’s buying full cuts of steak from MeaTech on store shelves at the moment. The company has so far only printed a carpaccio-like layer of meat, which is considerably thinner than a ribeye-sized cut of meat. It will likely be years before the latter emerges as an actual product, though MeaTech has recently announced a pilot production facility that will help in this process.

The company’s main competitor in this area is Aleph Farms, also based in Israel. Earlier this year, Aleph said it had developed a 3D-printed ribeye cultivated steak. Elsewhere, however, many cultivated meat companies continue to focus on unstructured meat like grounds, nuggets, and patties.

MeaTech says the patent filed for this week will give the company more control during the printing process, increase printing speeds, and allow for a greater variety of inks. The end goal, of course, is to improve the manufacturing process overall in order to get the company closer to making whole cuts of meat.