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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Givaudan

With Series of Partnerships, Givaudan Positions Itself for an Alt Protein Future

Swiss flavor manufacturer Givaudan recently announced plans to open a new Cultured Food Innovation Hub by 2022. This is the latest in a flurry of new initiatives that suggest the company is positioning itself as a major player in the alternative protein industry.

Givaudan and its partners hope to support cell-cultured protein startups as they perform research and development and bring new products to market. At the Innovation Hub, startups will have access to cell-culture and bio-fermentation equipment, as well as a product development laboratory.

With many countries awaiting regulatory decisions for cell-cultured products, Givaudan appears to be anticipating a growing demand for business-to-business services in the industry. The company already partners with plant-based meat and dairy startups to develop, prototype, and test products. This foray into cultivated protein territory means they’ll stay on the cutting edge as cell-culture products make their debuts.

The facility will be built outside of Zurich, and will be owned in partnership with plant equipment manufacturer Bühler and retail food giant Migros—a partnership that’s interesting in its own right. Pooling their ranges of expertise, the companies should be able to offer comprehensive, turnkey services to would-be cell-cultured meat manufacturers. Fabio Campanile, Givaudan’s Global Head of Science and Technology, Taste & Wellbeing, commented on the partnership in a recent press release:

“Bühler contributes with industry-leading solutions that are used in the scale-up and production of thousands of food products around the world; Givaudan brings in centuries of experience and knowledge in every aspect of taste, including all kinds of meat alternatives, and deep expertise in biotechnology, to product development; Migros is known for its competence in customer interaction and market cultivation.”

Givaudan has also been keeping busy with its own research and development efforts, working on producing sustainable flavor ingredients for alternative meats and other products. Last month, The Spoon reported on Givaudan and Ginkgo Bioworks’ joint effort to develop new flavor and fragrance ingredients through bio-fermentation. More recently, the company announced another partnership with Danish biotech company Biosyntia—this one focused on transforming natural sugars into flavoring agents.

We may see more companies from outside of the alternative protein industry take an interest in cell-cultured meat. German life sciences and electronics manufacturer Merck KGaA is now offering technology solutions (from process design to growth medium formulation) for cell-cultured manufacturers. These big-name partners should help smaller startups to bring their products to market more quickly.

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.

Givaudan and Bühler Open “Protein Innovation Centre” in Singapore

Flavor/fragrance company Givaudan and food processing company Bühler, announced this week they have opened the doors on their APAC Protein Innovation Centre at the existing Givaudan Woodlands site in Singapore. The facility will serve as a place to develop plant-based protein tailored to Asian consumers tastes and preferences. 

The goal is to bring together food processing companies, startups and researchers to develop more and better ways to produce alternative proteins. The Centre includes Bühle’s extrusion and processing equipment and a kitchen and flavor laboratory by Givaudan. The two Switzerland-based companies said that initially the facility will be able to produce 40 kilograms of plant proteins per hour.

The space includes a wet and dry extruder, a product development kitchen, storage facilities, and a viewing area where visitors to the Centre can watch live demonstrations. 

Givaudan and food processing company Bühler first announced the Centre back in February of 2020. Much has happened since then, and I’m not just talking about the pandemic. Over the last year or so, alternative protein companies from around world have flocked to Singapore to establish various innovation and R&D centers. That list now includes Perfect Day, Oatly, ADM, Avant Meats, and Eat Just. 

Singapore is currently trying to make more of its food production local. Currently, about 90 percent of the city-state’s food is imported. The government has set up the 30×30 initiative, which aims to produce 30 percent of Singapore’s food locally by 2030. These factors make Singapore an especially innovation-friendly environment when it comes to the development and regulation of alternative proteins.  

Givaudan and Bühler’s new facility will specifically focus on helping companies from the APAC region develop and scale their alternative protein solutions.

Givaudan Partners with Israeli Food Tech Incubator The Kitchen

Flavor and fragrance company Givaudan just announced a new partnership with The Kitchen, an Israeli food tech incubator.

Founded by the Strauss Group, the largest food & bev manufacturer in Israel, The Kitchen is a hub for emerging startups (many from Israel) looking to reinvent different parts of the food system. The program’s 12 current participants from cell-based meat company Aleph Farms to personalized recipe service MyFavorEats to food safety detector Inspecto.

According to an Givaudan announcement, The Kitchen’s partnership with Switzerland-based Givaudan will enable the latter to “expand its innovation ecosystem further by connecting with Israel-based food entrepreneurs who are contributing to the creation of healthier and sustainable products and solutions.” As details in the announcement were pretty scant, we’re still waiting to find out exactly what that means. We’ve reached out to Givaudan and will update this post if we hear back.

But it’s not too difficult to guess what the flavor and fragrance company will be getting out of the partnership: a direct line into the cutting-edge Israeli food tech ecosystem and a source for potential new company acquisitions. Working with an incubator like The Kitchen is also a great way for Givaudan to refresh their brand image as a company that’s hip with what’s new and not stuck in the past.

In fact, Givaudan has been slowly amassing partnerships with food tech innovation hubs around the world. In addition to The Kitchen, the company also works with Bits x Bites in China and EIT Food in Europe. Last December, Givaudan teamed up with Danone, Mars, and Ingredion to launch MISTA, a platform to help businesses solve problems in the food system, in San Francisco. And earlier this month, the company co-founded the Future Food Initiative, a joint venture with Swiss universities, Nestlé and food production company Bühler to encourage nutrition research in its native Switzerland.

Lately we’ve seen quite a few Big Food companies partnering with/creating their own accelerators to tap into emerging food trends. It seems like Givaudan is really taking the whole invest-in-innovation thing to heart — and I’m betting the company has more incubator partnerships in the pipeline.

Food Tech News: Cutting Edge Food & Bev Incubators and Seaweed Bread

Happy weekend, food techies. Hopefully your plans include nothing more strenuous than curling up under a blanket with a cup of cocoa watching The Final Table. But before you enter full binge mode, catch up on a few of our favorite food tech stories from around the web this week, featuring some new food and beverage incubators, pizza acquisitions, and bread made of seaweed.

Givaudan launches “optimizer” platform for food innovation companies
Flavor and fragrance company Givaudan has teamed up with Danone, Mars, and Ingredion to unveil MISTA, a new platform meant to help businesses develop innovative new products, strategies, and solutions for nagging food system problems. MISTA will open the doors of its 7,000 square foot San Francisco facility in 2019. The program will launch with 10 startups, including Wild Type (cell-based fish), Analytical Flavor Systems (AI-powered flavor prediction), and Drop Water (eco-friendly bottled water).

 

Pizza Hut to acquire online ordering provider QuikOrder
This week Pizza Hut announced that it would acquire QuikOrder, an online ordering software and service provider for restaurants. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. With this acquisition, Pizza Hut is working to distinguish itself from high-tech competitors like Domino’s (who has an ordering chatbot) and Little Caesar’s (who, despite not offering delivery, has a pizza portal), and develop a so-called “personalized online ordering experience” for its customers.

 

Photo: Pixabay

USDA gives Maine company $600,000 to develop kelp-enriched bread
Seaweed snacks are taking off in popularity, and now there will be a new way to chow down on kelp: bread. The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded VitaminSea, a Maine-based company that harvests and processes seaweed for use in food and supplements, a $600,000 grant to develop a bread made with seaweed (h/t FoodDive). This funding is on top of the $100,000 VitaminSea raised last year to develop the bread, called SeaKelp+. By putting kelp in bread, the USDA and VitaminSea hope to bring the health benefits of seaweed mainstream.

 

Grocery tech startup Fetch Rewards raises $8 million
This week Fetch Rewards, a Madison, WI-based grocery tech startup raised an $8 million funding round (h/t BizTimes). With Fetch Rewards’ app, users upload photos of their grocery receipts for points, which they can then redeem for in-store rewards. The company works with thousands of supermarkets, including Costco and Kroger. This latest round brings Fetch Rewards’ total funding to $35.3 million.

 

Food business incubator The Hatchery opens in Chicago
This week The Hatchery, a food & bev incubator, officially opened in the East Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago. Members will have access to the Hatchery’s kitchen production space as well as business incubation services, classes, and networking events. The space will also become the new permanent home for the Garfield Park Garden Network Neighborhood Market.

Did we miss anything? Give us a shout @TheSpoonTech!

Smell-O-Vision Meets VR with Givaudan’s Technology

Sure, you may have walked, flown, or even blasted aliens on a virtual world — but did you ever stop to smell the virtual roses?

With Givaudan‘s technology you can smell not only the roses but a variety of other scents in a virtual kitchen.

Here at the Food IT conference presented by The Mixing Bowl in San Francisco, Givaudan had their virtual-smells-in-a-box on display. Being the intrepid reporters we are, we strapped on a VR headset, grabbed a hand controller and stuck our nose in a scent emitter to smell bananas and strawberries as we made virtual smoothies, as well as (very strong) garlic and onions for our virtual steaks.

This tech will be making its way to consumers at some point, so if you plan on gaming in the near future, you’ll be able to smell gunfire or smoke as you wander the apocalyptic wasteland, or, more appropriately, the enticing aromas of cooked steak in The Legend of Zelda.

Check out the sites of virtual smells in our video below:

Smell-O-Vision Meets Virtual Reality with Givaudan from The Spoon on Vimeo.