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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

BlueNalu

We Talked to BlueNalu About Creating Fish Cell Lines From Scratch

Cellular aquaculture pioneer BlueNalu was born out of a contradiction. The company’s founders noted that while technological development around mammal cell products was booming, there was a relative dearth of knowledge about fish cell development. Yet the market opportunity for cell-cultured fish—with global demand for seafood on the rise and wild stocks increasingly vulnerable—looked big.

In attempting to do for fish cells what its peers were doing for cow cells, BlueNalu and other cell-cultured seafood companies faced a steep learning curve. Mammal-cell companies could take advantage of existing cell lines and a wealth of research from the pharmaceutical industry, but fish-cell companies would have to start almost from scratch, unlocking the unique conditions required to propagate and stabilize fish cells.

For BlueNalu, the mission was not only to develop a stable cell line for a single species of fish. “It was about having the correct methods to be able to reproducibly extract stem cells from a wide range of species,” Lauran Madden, the company’s Vice President of Research and Product Development, told The Spoon this week over Zoom.

So the company developed a proprietary technology platform that would allow it to create stable cell lines, with the flexibility to switch from one species to another. Madden says that achieving that reproducibility was a special challenge because cell growth conditions vary between species. “For example, mahi and tuna are not exactly the same, but they’re more similar to each other than they are to a cow,” she says.

To identify a group of focus species, BlueNalu used a decision matrix that factored in a variety of species attributes. The team looked at how scarce or vulnerable a species was, and how heavily it was imported. They also considered species that pose health concerns—like tuna, which contains mercury. And they looked for species that couldn’t be raised using conventional aquaculture.

The search for suitable donor fish also had to be carried out carefully. “We try to find trustworthy sources for species, where they’re legally bred or caught,” says Madden. “And we do extensive testing on the sample tissue to make sure that it’s free of contaminants.”

The team ultimately succeeded in creating cell lines for eight different species of fish, including bluefin tuna, mahi mahi, yellowtail, and snapper.

With its proprietary tech platform and species flexibility, BlueNalu aspires to become more than a manufacturer of a fixed line of cell-cultured seafood products. “Our approach is to become a global brand, a supply chain of seafood products,” company President and CEO Lou Cooperhouse told The Spoon this week in a Zoom interview. In theory, the company could use its platform to respond to a decline of a given fish species.

Having invested extensively in building new technology, the company is eyeing a range of intellectual property opportunities. But Cooperhouse doesn’t expect to see the cell-cultured seafood space become as competitive as the plant-based meats arena in the near future. The technological barrier that still exists for budding cell-cultured seafood companies means that there’s still strong competitive insulation in this industry niche.

“This is a challenging category that requires quite a bit of capital,” he says. “In making cell-cultured fish fillets, there’s really, in my opinion, no other way to do this but through our technology.”

BlueNalu’s investments in research and development may eventually find applications outside of the alternative protein industry: The team believes that some of its discoveries could help to power scientific research and support conservation efforts. For instance, the company’s technology could help researchers to understand fish species’ responses to environmental contaminants at the cellular level.

“There’s so much that is unknown about fish species and the ocean in general,” says Cooperhouse. “We’re all about preserving biodiversity and ecosystem erosion. So yes, there could be some licensing opportunities and other opportunities for our technology to have some real value outside of BlueNalu.”

With its species cell lines ready to grow, BlueNalu is preparing to launch its products in the U.S. and abroad. The company recently announced a new partnership with European frozen food company Nomad Foods, the latest in a series of international partnerships. Cooperhouse believes the company’s tech platform will support its mission of supplying scarce fish species worldwide without competing with local, conventional aquaculture businesses.

“We’re not just making healthier products that are sustainable,” he says. “Our products also support food security, they create jobs, they build factories. It really is a bit of a holy grail opportunity for us.”

Europe? The U.S.? Israel? Which Country Might Be Next to Approve Cultured Meat

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Ever since Eat Just nabbed the world’s first regulatory approval to sell cultured meat in Singapore (and followed that milestone up by actually selling it), myself and many others have wondered which market will be next. 

The question was asked again this week when an article from Food Navigator zeroed in on Europe, noting, “Europeans want to know when it will be their turn: when will cultivated meat be served on EU plates?” It seems the most probable answer is three to five years. 

With Singapore already selling cultured meat at restaurants, five years seems a long time. But David Brandes, the Managing Director for Belgium-based company Piece of Meat, noted to Food Navigator that “bureaucracy and political interest” hold back the regulatory process, and that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)’s risk assessment process alone takes nine months.

Still, the European Commission has a clearly defined process for bringing cultured meat to market that is known as the Novel Food authorization, which makes it a logical market to try and bring a product into. For example, Mosa Meat, based in the Netherlands, has said it is focusing on Singapore and Europe for its first launches, specifically citing Europe’s Novel Food authorizations as a reason. Europe is also home to many other cultured meat companies, including Blue Biosciences, Mirai, and CellulaREvolution.

On the other hand, many have their sights set on the U.S. as the next destination for the sale of cultured meat. In 2019, the FDA and the USDA issued a formal agreement to jointly oversee regulation of cultured meat using existing frameworks. (The framework does not apply to cultured seafood, which is regulated exclusively by the FDA.)

U.S.-based companies are still leading the cultured meat industry, too, and have attracted huge amounts of investment in the recent past, including Memphis Meats’ $161 million round in 2020, BlueNalu’s $60 million fundraise, and, of course, Eat Just’s recent $200 million fundraise. The latter — still the only cultured meat company in the world cleared to sell a product — hasn’t explicitly said it will next launch commercially in the U.S. In a recent conversation, Eat Just founder and CEO Josh Tetrick only hinted, saying “I think it’s more likely than not that we’ll see clearance sometime in the next two years. I hope it’s this year — we’re going to be ready if it is. But it’s hard to tell.”

Additionally, California-based BlueNalu has said its products will launch in the second half of 2021, though it hasn’t yet said where. And an organization known as the Alliance for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood Innovation, which includes Memphis Meats, New Age Meats, Eat Just, and others, is dedicated to advancing the reach of cultured meat in the U.S.

Let’s also keep one eye on Israel. While its a smaller market than the U.S. or Europe, the country is like Singapore in that its government is very keen on advancing cultured meat. That includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyah, who in December of last year became the first head of state to taste cultured meat. He noted at the time that Israel will “become a powerhouse for alternative meat and alternative protein.”

Israel is also home to the world’s first restaurant dedicated to cultured meat, SuperMeat’s The Chicken. No products are sold their. Rather, consumers apply to gain entry then give detailed feedback in exchange for tasting the company’s cultured meat product. (Spoiler alert: it’s chicken.) 

There are also a growing number of companies coming from Israel, including Aleph Farms, Future Meat, and MeaTech 3D, which already publicly trades on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. 

Worth noting is that MeaTech 3D has also filed to go public in the U.S., which may suggest where its sights are set in terms of initial commercialization. Future Meat, too, has also said it plans to launch in the U.S. by 2022 via restaurants and direct-to-consumer sales. So while Israel may not necessarily be host the world’s second commercial sale of cultured meat, it may well provide the companies doing so elsewhere. Say, in the U.S.

Other Headlines

Tyson’s Raised & Rooted Expands into Plant-Based Burgers, Brats and Italian Sausage. Tyson Foods’ plant-based protein brand, announced today that it is expanding its lineup with three new offerings: burgers, Bratwurst and Italian sausages. 

Sweden: Stockeld Dreamery Launching First Plant-Based Cheese This Week. Plant-based cheese startup Stockeld Dreamerly, will launch its first product, Stockeld Chunk, at select stores in Stockholm, Sweden on May 6. 

OmniFoods Plans to Launch Its Plant-Based OmniPork Products in the U.S. This Year. OmniPork, the plant-based meat line from Green Monday subsidiary OmniFoods, will launch in the U.S. later this year.

Food Tech News: Carbon-Negative Cutlery at Target, Upcycled Food Label Launches

Welcome to your weekly Food Tech News round-up! Many companies in the food tech space made efforts to honor Earth Day, so this week all of our news is relevant to sustainability. We have stories on AirCarbon cutlery launching in Target, a new upcycled food certification, BlueNalu’s essay contest, and Perfect Day’s new advisory council.

Restore AirCarbon Cutlery launches in Target nationwide

Newlight Technologies‘ brand Restore produces carbon-negative cutlery from its proprietary material called AirCarbon. At the beginning of this week, the cutlery launched in Target locations nationwide. The cutlery is carbon-negative because its created from biodegradable plastic made from absorbed greenhouse gases. The straws and cutlery are dishwasher safe and, if disposed of, will decompose in a landfill. A 24-piece pack of wrapped straws costs $2.99 and a three-piece cutlery pack with a natural fiber carrying case costs $4.99. The products are available on Target’s website and in stores.

Upcycled food label officially debuts

Vegan, organic, non-GMO, and gluten-free food labels exist, and now a label exists for products comprised of upcycled food ingredients. The Upcycled Food Association officially launched the “Upcycled Certified” label this week. The certification can be used to signify if food, beverages, pet food, dietary supplements, cosmetics, or household cleaners contain upcycled food ingredients. The organization defines upcycled food as essentially any food using ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to human consumption and ended up in a food waste destination. The organization’s goal with the newly debuted certification is to empower consumers to make climate friendly purchases through upcycled food products.

BlueNalu announces scholarship winners

BlueNalu, producers of cell-based seafood, held a contest called the Eat Blue Essay Contest in collaboration with the Research Chefs Association (RCA). The point of the contest was to prompt discussion around sustainable seafood and ocean conservation goals set forth by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Culinary students of RCA from around the world were encouraged to submit essays. This week the three finalists were announced, and the essays can be read on the Eat Blue website. BlueNalu is awarding the finalists with scholarships to support educational expenses.

Perfect Day forms advisory board

Berkley, California-based Perfect Day, pioneers in fermented animal-free dairy, announced this week that it has formed a Sustainability & Health Advisory Council. The advisory board includes former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian, Leonardo Di Caprio, and several other leaders in the food, agriculture, and nutrition space. The council members will help guide Perfect Day on decisions regarding health and the environment. Perfect Day recently commissioned a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment to evaluate the environmental impact of its non-animal whey protein, and the report found that it generates at least 85 percent and up to 97 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional production methods.

Podcast: BlueNalu CEO on Building a Cell-Based Fish Tech Company

As a long-time food industry exec, BlueNalu President and CEO Lou Cooperhouse knew there were established food industry techniques his company could borrow from when building cell-based seafood.

“It’s a much bigger toolbox,” said Cooperhouse. “You can embrace some of the technologies that industry uses, and create a product that absolutely can meet the sensory expectations and experiences of fish, which will be much more challenging on the meat side.”

One of the tools from the food industry toolbox, according to Cooperhouse, is layering.

“The concept of layering plays itself very nicely with the food industry,” said Cooperhouse. “There’s extrusion technologies, there’s folding technologies and there’s lamination technologies like in packaging.”

But while BlueNalu was able to leverage some of the technologies and processes from the food industry, the company had a much smaller set of knowledge to borrow from when it comes to replicating fish cells. That’s because the vast majority of work in the cell-based meat space has been done with mammal cells, while fish cell replication for human consumption was largely unchartered waters.

“There was little to no intellectual property around anybody ever growing and propagating successfully stable cell lines of fish,” said Cooperhouse. “So we began with a clean piece of paper on the technology side.”

And so BlueNalu set about to build a set of IP to create cell-based fish products, which Cooperhouse describes as an “end game” of a “product that has the same nutritional, functional, and sensory characteristics as seafood.”

Three years later, the company is ready to move to pilot production with the goal of creating up to 500 pounds of fish per week in its new pilot production plant it has started building in San Diego.

If you want to hear about Lou’s story and how he went from concept to pilot production of cell-based seafood, you won’t want to miss this podcast. You can hear my full conversation with Lou Cooperhouse, and all of our podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or by clicking play below.

BlueNalu Secures $60M for Production of Cell-Based Seafood

San Diego-based BlueNalu, a startup building technology to make cell-based seafood, announced today that it has raised $60 million in convertible note financing from new and existing investors. Rage Capital led this round of financing, with other participants including Agronomics, Lewis & Clark AgriFood, McWin, KBW Ventures, and Siddhi Capital.

This most recent round of financing will enable BlueNalu to open its planned 40,000 square foot pilot production facility and begin producing its cultured seafood there. Additionally, the company will complete an FDA regulatory review for its initial cultured fish products. BlueNalu will be trialing these initial products in foodservice establishments across the US sometime this year.

BlueNalu creates a variety of different seafood species by extracting cells from fish and crustaceans and growing these cell samples in large bioreactors. The company said it will start by launching cell-based mahi-mahi later this year, and then cell-based bluefin tuna after.

Due to global concerns of overfishing and pollution in seafood stocks, cell-based seafood may play an important role in the next few years by offering an alternative to wild-caught and farmed seafood. Avant Meat is focused on satisfying the tastebuds of consumers in China and Hong Kong through cell-based fish maw and sea cucumber. Singapore-based Shiok Meats has so far produced cell-based lobster and shrimp, with plans to make the shrimp commercially available sometime in 2022.

BlueNalu’s new production facility will be used to produce commercial-grade cultured fish for restaurants and other food outlets, and the new facility will be capable of providing 200 – 500 pounds of cell-based seafood per week.

Singapore’s Shiok Meats Raises $12.6M in Series A Funding

Cell-based seafood maker Shiok Meats announced today it has raised $12.6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Aqua-Spark, an investment fund focused on sustainable aquaculture. SEEDS Capital, Real Tech Fund, Irongrey, and several others also participated in the round, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. This brings Shiok Meats’ total funding so far to $20.2 million.

Shiok Meats said it will put the new funds towards building its commercial pilot plant, from which the company plans to launch its minced shrimp product in 2022. 

Shrimp is one of the most widely consumed seafood types in the world. For now, at least, Shiok Meats says it is the only company in the world creating a cell-based version that’s grown outside the animal. The company’s process involves isolating stem cells from the shrimp then growing them inside nutrient-rich bioreactors. 

It joins a growing list of cell-based protein producers that have raised funds over the last year, including Blue Nalu, Good Catch, and Wild Type.

For all of these companies, price remains a major hurdle to getting products to market: cell-based protein is simply an expensive process right now that makes it impossible to get products to price parity with traditional seafood offerings. On its own website, Shiok meats notes that a limited production scale is in part responsible for the high costs of its cell-based shrimp. Scaling up production will help the company bring down costs.

Shiok recently partnered with IntegriCulture to use the latter’s CultNet System to create shrimp cell cultures. Doing so brings down the overall cost of cell-based shrimp production, since it doesn’t require expensive animal serums normally used for the process. 

Shiok did a first public taste testing of cell-based shrimp dumplings last year, to positive reviews. The rest of us will have to wait a little longer. The company’s initial products will be frozen cell-based shrimp meat for dumplings and other shrimp-based dishes. In the coming years, the company also plans to launch shrimp flavoring pastes and powders, fully formed 3D shrimp, and cell-based lobster and crab products.

Mosa Meat Raises $55M for Cell-Based Burgers

Mosa Meat, the Netherlands-based company known for creating the world’s first lab-grown hamburger, announced today it has raised $55 million as part of a larger Series B round. The round was led by Blue Horizon Ventures with participation from Bell Food Group, M Ventures, and others. 

Earlier this year, the company said it had achieved a more than 80x reduction in the cost of the growth medium it uses for its lab-grown meat. That’s one heck of a reduction, considering the Mosa Meat’s original hamburger cost $325,000. The company also opened a new pilot production plant.

Especially noteworthy is that in 2019, Mosa Meat successfully removed Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS), which is both expensive and ethically controversial, from its growth medium. According to a company blog post from July, removing FBS from the medium helped bring down overall costs, which in turn gets Mosa Meat closer to achieving price parity with traditional meat. Reaching that price parity will be crucial to selling the average consumer on the idea of eating burgers and other meats grown in a lab. Achieving the right texture and taste are also critical components for cell-based meat products.

The cell-based meat category has seen a huge uptick in investment over the last several months, and for more than just burgers. IntegriCulture, a company making lab-grown foie gras, raised $7.4 million in May and got a $2.2 million grant in August. BlueNalu raised $20 million in February for its cell-based seafood. Overall, the cell-based meat category has received more than $290 million in investment for 2020.

Mosa Meat says it will use its new funds to extend its current pilot production facility, expand its team, and develop an industrial-sized production line. It will also “introduce delicious cultivated beef to consumers,” though no specific date for that is set. For now, the company said it will work with European regulators to demonstrate the safety of cell-based meat and get regulatory approval to “serve consumers in Europe who are craving change.”

Ocean Hugger Has Big Plans to Re-Enter the Plant-Based Seafood Market

Plant-based seafood startup Ocean Hugger said this week it is in the midst of planning a relaunch, according to an interview with Food Navigator. 

In June, the New York-based company had to cease operations, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason. Up to that point, Ocean Hugger ran a promising business selling its “tuna” and “eel” products to foodservice businesses. As we’re all too aware these days, the foodservice industry has been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, and Ocean Hugger found itself facing no sales and had to stop operations.

Now, however, it appears the company is planning its comeback. An update from August 31 on the Ocean Hugger website states that, “Over the coming months, we will be exploring paths to relaunch bigger and better than ever.”

How the company plans to do that is under wraps for now. Food Navigator notes that new developments should “enable the business to relaunch next year.” Co-founder David Benzaquen suggested to the publication that Ocean Hugger is exploring ways to re-enter the market and also hinted at new products. He gave no further details.

It’s reasonable to imagine that, with the right business model, Ocean Hugger will be successful in its attempt to relaunch. Investment in alternative proteins has already reached over $1.1 billion in 2020, and both plant- and cell-based seafood startups have made many a headline recently. General Mills invested $32 million Good Catch at the beginning of 2020. BlueNalu, which grows cell-based seafood in bioreactors, nabbed a $20 million investment in February. More recently, S2G ventures said it would be investing $100 million in seafood and ocean health startups including alt-protein.

Ocean Hugger has so far raised $500,000 from a funding round in 2019. Benzaquen said in his interview this week that seafood is one of the most obvious areas of animal protein to disrupt from a sustainability and animal welfare angle. If others agree, that investment figure for Ocean Hugger could go up significantly in the future.

Australian Company Vow Is Taste Testing Cell-based Kangaroo and Other Cultured Meats

Cell-based meat may be some time away from the grocery aisle, but that hasn’t stopped companies all over the world from trying to raise animal protein without the actual animal. Think cell-based beef, pork, and seafood, and, now, kangaroo and alpaca. 

The latter two on that list come courtesy of a Sydney, Austraila-based company called Vow, which today announced a recent “culinary demonstration” of its “multi-species meat platform.” Working with Australian chefs Neil Perry Corey Costelloe, Vow in August held a recent event showing off six of its cell-based meat types: goat, pork kangaroo, rabbit, lamb, and alpaca. All dishes came from Vow’s cell library (more on that below).

On its website, Vow says it takes just six weeks to get from animal cell to plated product. The company first takes and nourishes the animal cells, which grow in cultivators and form fat, tissue, and muscle just as they would if growing inside the animal.  

There are a couple things that set Vow apart from other companies working in the cell-based meat space. First is the sheer selection of meat Vow aims to eventually offer the buying public. Kangaroo and alpaca are unconventional enough when it comes to cultured meat, but Vow has also name-dropped zebra, yak, and other animals in the past. 

This isn’t just a gimmick to grow weird meat for the “wow” factor. Speaking recently to Food Navigator, Vow’s co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Tim Noakesmith pointed to the “uncanny valley” problem meat alternatives can encounter: that giving people a product they are used to but with a slight variation (e.g., texture, aftertaste) will garner a negative reaction.

“If we offer them something new, a new meat via a new format and give them a completely different experience, there won’t be this prior comparison [or the instinct to reject the new experience],” he told Food Navigator.

True to that idea, Vow keeps a “cell library” of different cells its scoured from all corners of the earth, which is the other factor setting it apart from others in the cultured meat space. The company says there are “hundreds upon hundreds of possible combinations” for future meat.

Vow co-founder and CEO George Peppou said in today’s press release that the recent taste testing event represented a milestone that “demonstrates we can grow the cells of any animal, not just those we can farm.”

Thus far, Integriculture’s cell-based foie gras and BlueNalu’s crustaceans are about as exotic as it’s gotten for cultured meat. So Vow’s recent unveiling of its new dishes is definitely a milestone for the cell-baed meat sector, which has raised around $290 million so far in 2020.

Vow says it is currently hiring chefs, food scientists, and sensory experts to help develop new products. For now, the company is focused on markets in the Asia-Pacific region. 

New Age Meats Raises Another $2M for Cell-Based Pork

Cultivated meat startup New Age Meats (NAM) announced today it has raised a $2 million seed extension round led by TechU Ventures. The round follows the NAM’s $2.7 million seed round from earlier this year and brings the company’s total funding to $5 million.

The Berkeley, CA company is currently developing a cell-based pork sausage and says the new funds will go towards this development. In particular, that includes bringing the price point of its product down. 

NAM will also use the funds to further build out its Food Science department, which it says is focused on getting the key attributes — taste, smell, texture, etc. — of its cell-based pork as close to the real thing as possible. On that note, the company held a taste test for its pork back in 2018 and received largely positive reviews. 

Another key element to NAM’s methods is its use of automation to optimize bioreactors and essentially grow its meat faster. Part of the new funding will go towards implementing more of this automation, as well as robotics, to speed up both the research and development processes. 

Investment in cell-based meat has already reached over $1 billion in 2020 so far, which is almost double what it was for all of 2019. Cell-based meat makes up a small-but-significant portion of that investment, and NAM’s seed extension follows funding news from BlueNalu, Integriculture, and others. 

Though the company didn’t provide a timeframe, NAM said today it plans to eventually build out a pilot facility, scale product development and production, and bring its first products to market.

As Cell-Based Protein Becomes a Reality, What to Call it Gets Increasingly Important

Last week we briefly covered news about a Rutgers study that found “cell-based” the best descriptor for lab-grown seafood products. Further thought and reading on the matter leads me to believe the study’s findings have implications for labeling across all of the cell-based protein space, not just seafood.

Here’s a quick recap: A new study by Rutgers in the Journal of Food Science recommends “Companies seeking to commercialize seafood products made from the cells of fish or shellfish should use the term ‘cell-based’ on product labels.”

The study, commissioned by cell-based seafood company BlueNalu, claims to be the first of its kind evaluating how to label alternative seafood products in a way that both appeals to consumers and meets regulatory requirements around product naming. The study was done by William Hallman, a professor who chairs the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers-New Brunswick’s School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. He noted this week that participants in the study were able to tell the label “cell-based” apart from ones like “wild caught” or “farm raised,” and that those participants still believed the cell-based products were as nutritious as the others. 

Other names tested in the study were “cell-cultured seafood” and “cultivated seafood,” as well as phrases like “cultivated from the cells of ____” and “grown directly from the cells of ____.”

It’s not hard to understand why “cell-based seafood” resonates the most with consumers. The above phrases lack the kind of concise description needed for food products, and terms like “cultivated seafood” are rather muddy in terms of describing what goes into making the product. 

This question of labeling is only going to get bigger as cell-based proteins move further from concept and into a culinary reality for average consumers. We’ve already seen this play out to some degree with plant-based proteins. About a year ago, large meat corporations were pushing hard to ban their plant-based counterparts from using words like “burgers” and “sausages” on packaging. As we wrote previously, “Big Meat trying to quash alterna-meats’ popularity by telling companies how they can or can’t label themselves feels protectionist and ineffective, not to mention desperate, at this point.” 

And that was before the pandemic. Since COVID-19 hit and shed an uncomfortably bright light on issues in traditional meat production, demand for alternative proteins has been through the roof. Just this week, investment network FAIRR released a report stating investment in alt-protein for the first half of 2020 is nearly double the amount for all of 2019. That includes cell-based protein.

Whether Big Seafood pushes back on labeling now that more cell-based seafood is coming to market remains to be seen. It will certainly have a lot of opponents if it does. BlueNalu just announced a new facility designed for commercial production of its alt-seafood products. Wild Type raised a $12.5 million Series A round last year for its cultured salmon, and Shiok Meats just partnered with Integriculture to scale up production of lab-grown shrimp. And those are only the seafood-focused players in the cell-cultured protein space.

Big Seafood aside, effective labeling of all these products — and all cell-based protein products, really — will be key to appealing to new consumers who may not have previously known about cell-based meat and dairy, and that it’s just as nutritious as the real deal. When it comes to finding a name for these alt-protein items, that could be the most difficult and most rewarding challenge companies face.  

BlueNalu Announces New, Expanded Facility to Bring its Cell-Based Seafood to Test Markets

BlueNalu, which creates cell-based seafood, announced today that it is expanding its R&D and manufacturing space with a new HQ facility in San Diego.

According to the press announcement, BlueNalu has leased 38,000 sq. feet (a six-fold increase over its current space), which will house a pilot-scale food production plant “that will be designed for the commercial production of BlueNalu’s various cell-based seafood products in its initial test markets.” It will also feature the first BlueNalu kitchen and demo space.

The space will undergo renovation with a plan to open during the second half of 2021. Once up and running it will be creating anywhere between 200 – 500 pounds of its cell-based seafood per week to be sold to restaurants and other food outlets in test markets.

BlueNalu is working on a number of cell-based fish products including mahi mahi, red snapper, tuna and yellowtail. The company did a public culinary demo of its yellowtail at the end of last year. BlueNalu has plans for an even bigger, 150,000 sq. foot facility to be opened in the next five years that is capable of making 18 million pounds of cell-based seafood a year.

There are a few companies currently racing to bring their cell-based seafood to market. Wild Type does salmon while Shiok Meats does crustaceans. BlueNalu is focusing on finfish, and says that its different from other players in the market in that its product can be prepared raw, cooked multiple ways (seared, grilled, fried, etc.), as well as through acidification (ceviche, for example).

Getting this facility up and running will be an important step in BlueNalu’s path to commercialization. Products in R&D are one thing, but getting to scale and price parity with traditional animal-based seafood will be critical to its long-term success.