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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

precision fermentation

With Production Milestone, New Culture Eyes Price Parity for Its Animal-Free Mozzarella

New Culture, a company that uses precision fermentation to make animal-free casein, says it has reached a new manufacturing milestone that enables it to produce enough casein for 25 thousand pizzas worth of cheese per manufacturing run.

This new production milestone, which the company achieved through partnerships with external manufacturing partners, pushes the company’s production capacity far beyond its earlier development volumes and, according to New Culture, puts it on a trajectory to reach price parity with factory-farmed cheese within three years.

The push for a more environmentally friendly dairy has resulted in several startups chasing animal-free casein, which gives cheese its stretchy, melty properties. While there are a number of plant-based mozzarella cheeses on the market, New Culture’s mozzarella is the first made at production volume with animal-identical casein, the protein that gives cheese its melty, stretchy properties. In addition to actually tasting like cheese, New Culture and other makers of precision fermentation-created casein (like Change Foods and Standing Ovation) also promise that their animal-free cheese will be free of lactose, antibiotics, and cholesterol.

Looking forward, New Culture hopes to produce enough casein for more than 14 million pizzas’ worth of cheese and has plans to expand into other cheeses. If the company can reach its promise of price parity, it should be able to carve out a nice slice of an alternative cheese market projected to hit $9.6 billion by 2032.

TurtleTree Debuts Animal-Free Lactoferrin

TurtleTree, a biotechnology startup using precision fermentation to create bioactive ingredients such as animal-free milk proteins, has announced it will debut its precision-fermentation derived lactoferrin, which has the commercial name of LF+, tonight at a tasting event in San Francisco.

The bioactive milk protein, which the company says is nicknamed “pink gold” due to its high-cost and pink hue, is much sought after for its health benefits, including immunity, iron regulation, and digestive health support. However, conventional extraction techniques require massive amounts of cow’s milk – up to 10,000 liters, the equivalent of a week’s worth of milk production from nearly 50 cows – to obtain just 1 kilogram of purified lactoferrin. Because of this, traditionally derived lactoferrin costs anywhere between $700 to $1,500 per kilogram, which has been a gating factor in the broader adoption of this valuable protein.

By using precision fermentation, which uses microbes embedded with lactoferrin’s recipe to produce the protein, TurtleTree hopes to offer a more affordable and sustainably-derived form of lactoferrin to the market in LF+. If they are successful, the company may be one of the first startups launched in recent years to target proteins for infants (and beyond) using cellular agriculture to bring a scaled, revenue-generating product line to market. More broadly, the company may have also engineered an approach to make lactoferrin more widely available to consumers through a variety of products.

The move towards precision fermentation to produce functional proteins is a sign the company has evolved since it was founded in 2019. When The Spoon first interviewed the company, they focused primarily on using cell-cultivation methods to produce breast milk analogs. According to CTO Max Rye at the time, the company was using cell-cultivation techniques to grow mammary gland cells in a lab that would lactate milk. Company CEO Fengru Lin speculated early on that their first product would be human breast milk.

Fast forward to 2023, and the company has become more diversified in its approach to utilizing cellular agriculture techniques after bringing on some key hires skilled in the application of precision fermentation, a move that looks to have accelerated its path toward revenue with the commercialization of its animal-free lactoferrin. The company hopes to launch LF+ in the fourth quarter of this year.

You can watch the TurtleTree hero reel on their new product below:

Unlocking The Future of Nutrition with LF+, TurtleTree’s Unique Lactoferrin

Belgian Precision Fermentation Specialist Paleo Raises €12m Series A

Belgian precision fermentation company Paleo has secured €12m in a Series A funding round the company announced today. The round was led by DSM Venturing and Planet A Ventures, alongside Gimv, SFPIM Relaunch, Beyond Impact, and Siddhi Capital.

According to the release, the funding will be used to scale up production of myoglobin, a protein that gives plant-based meat and fish alternatives what the company describes as a “real taste” experience. Myoglobin will be used by food manufacturers to create meat and fish alternatives.

“Paleo developed a technology to produce ingredients that lift these obstacles,” said Hermes Sanctorum, co-founder and CEO of Paleo. “Adding our ingredients to plant-based meat alternatives is a game changer that brings the experience of ‘real’ meat. You can smell it, you can taste it, and you can see it because our ingredients provide that vibrant red color that transforms into caramelized brown when you grill it. And no animal is involved whatsoever defining our ingredients as vegan.”

The company says the funding will be used to file for regulatory approval in certain markets and scale up production towards commercial production. The company says plant-based food with Paleo ingredients on the market by 2025.

“The food industry has barely scratched the surface of what is possible with precision fermentation, and Paleo will be at the forefront of this revolution in food production,” said Andy de Jong, co-founder and COO.

Precision fermentation continues to be the most resilient of the alternative protein segments over what is a dark time for many future food startups. The industry, which just saw the creation of its own industry consortium, has gained momentum in recent years as it has proven itself both incredibly flexible in terms of the ingredients it can produce, as well as scalable enough to produce ingredients for mass-market consumer products.

Nine Food Tech Startups Join Forces to Create the Precision Fermentation Alliance

Today nine companies in the precision fermentation industry have announced they have established the Precision Fermentation Alliance, a new trade organization aimed at promoting precision fermentation as a trusted solution for a more sustainable and resilient food system. The group says it will act as “an industry voice and global convener for the precision fermentation industry”, and ” champion precision fermentation as a trusted solution for a more resilient and sustainable food system.”

Precision fermentation uses microbes like fungi as hosts to produce functional ingredients like sugars and proteins, which often star as the key ingredients in flagship products companies like EVERY Company and Perfect Day, two founding members of the PFA. The technology has gained momentum in recent years as it has proven itself both incredibly flexible in terms of the ingredients it can produce, as well as scalable enough to produce ingredients for mass-market consumer products (like the heme in Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat).

According to the announcement, The Precision Fermentation Alliance has three major goals:

  • Promote understanding of precision fermentation technology. Establish global transparency around ingredients and foods made with precision fermentation to build trust and familiarity.
  • Educate and engage key stakeholders throughout the food industry value chain to establish best practices regarding regulatory, manufacturing, food safety, and communications standards and compliance.
  • Develop market access and the ability to operate and market products effectively by engaging with regulators. Unlock public funding and public-private partnerships to accelerate industry growth.

“There is a direct line between food production, climate, socioeconomic opportunities, and equity,” said Nicki Briggs, Chair of the Precision Fermentation Alliance and Vice President of Corporate Communications at Perfect Day.

“As we look to extend the use of this technology to produce an ever-expanding list of food ingredients, such as proteins and fats, we will be able to produce a wide variety of our most beloved foods animal-free, and with a much lower environmental footprint,” said Irina Gerry, Chief Marketing Officer, Change Foods and Vice Chair, Precision Fermentation Alliance. “Ushering in this new era in food requires clear communication, thoughtful policy, consistent regulation and stakeholder engagement, which this alliance is positioned to do.”

The founding members of the Precision Fermentation Alliance are Change Foods, The EVERY Co., Helaina, Imagindairy, Motif FoodWorks, New Culture, Onego Bio, Perfect Day, and Remilk.

New Culture Believes Its Animal-Free Casein Will Help Grow the Alt.Cheese Market

It might sound like a scene from “Forest Gump,” but consumers love cheese–sliced, diced, shredded, spread, liquid, and chunked. Globally, according to Expert Market Research, we’re looking at a space that reached a value of about $75.46 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.8% in the forecast period of 2023-2028, reaching a value of approximately $109.85 billion by 2026. Any way you look at it, that’s a lot of cheddar.

While David-like com-compared to the Goliath dairy-based cheese world, alternative cheese—that is, “cheese” made without products that come directly from animals—is gaining steam and popularity. Future Market Insights states that the global cheese alternative market reached a  market valuation of $4.3 billion in 2022, accelerating with a CAGR of 8.3% by 2022-2032 to reach a value of $9.6 billion by 2032.

What alt.cheesemakers know is that one of the keys to producing animal-free cheese is the production of animal-free casein. Casein, which predominantly comes from cow’s milk, is a protein that is a critical ingredient in cheese-making. California-based New Culture has a solution that can make casein at scale without animal milk using precision fermentation. The company says its mozzarella will debut at pizzerias around the United States in 2023.

In a recent interview, New Culture told The Spoon about the company and its future trajectory.

How is your company different from Change Foods, which also says it is making animal-free casein?

At New Culture, we’ve proven our ability as the industry leader to produce animal-free casein at scale efficiently. This is critical in enabling us to produce delicious animal-free mozzarella, drive down cost, unlock broad distribution, and succeed in our mission to lead the change to an animal-free dairy future. We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback from a wide range of chefs, pizzaiolos, and pizza lovers who have been able to enjoy our melty, stretchy cheese cooked in ovens up to 800 degrees.

We’re focused on creating a future with delicious animal-free cheese that positively impacts the environment and the global food system, and we’re excited about the rapidly expanding ecosystem working toward that goal. 

Are you involved in the entire process, including making the cheese or animal-free protein?

New Culture makes animal-free cheese from end to end, producing our animal-free casein protein and then turning that casein into cheese. Beginning with our mozzarella,  we combine our animal-free casein with water, plant-based fat, and a touch of sugar, vitamins, and minerals. We use traditional cheese-making to create the final product. Unlike conventional cheese, ours is free from lactose, cholesterol, trace hormones, and antibiotics.

To make animal-free mozzarella that tastes like the real deal, we use only the best plant-based fats to produce the perfect mouthfeel and consistency and a dash of plant-based sugars to match the sugar content in cheese that comes from animal milk. We also mix good vitamins and minerals such as calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin B to ensure our cheese provides the dietary profile that cheese eaters expect and the nutritional benefits they deserve.

Do you plan to be B2B or direct to the consumer?

New Culture’s first product is a melty, stretchy, animal-free mozzarella, which we’re planning to launch in pizzerias as our first market. Over time we will develop a complete portfolio of other cheese products, expand into retail (e.g., grocery stores), and sell our animal-free casein to food manufacturers as a B2B ingredient supplier.

How long before you have products in the market, and what will they be?

We are very excited that our first animal-free mozzarella will be available for consumers to taste in 2023. Mozzarella is the most consumed cheese in the US (13 Ibs consumed annually per person – everyone loves pizza!), and we will be the first to market with a pizza cheese made of casein from precision fermentation.

How do you think your product will fare with vegans, given it is animal-free but not strictly vegan?

New Culture cheese is free from all animal inputs and is entirely vegan. We are proud to make a product that vegans and cheese lovers will enjoy. We can do this by producing our animal-free casein protein – the essential protein that makes cheese cheesy – through precision fermentation. Instead of using a cow to produce milk that contains casein proteins, we get mighty microorganisms to make those same casein proteins, but without involving any animals. This food technology has been around for decades and is actually a method already used in the cheese-making process. 

Company Behind Babybel Cheese Bets Big on Non-Animal Casein With Standing Ovation Partnership

Today French cheese giant Bel Group, the company behind cheese brands Babybel, The Laughing Cow, and Boursin announced an exclusive partnership with precision fermentation specialist Standing Ovation to incorporate the startup’s animal-free casein milk protein into select cheese offerings. The deal follows an equity investment made by Bel Group into the Paris-based startup in September.

According to the announcement, the two companies scientific teams will work together at Bel’s R&D center in Vendôme, France, and at Standing Ovation’s facility in Paris. In addition, Bel plans to use Standing Ovation fermentation-derived casein – a protein critical in the cheesemaking process and helps give cheese its taste, aroma, and stretching and melting characteristics- in select Bel products.

Standing Ovation’s technology derives animal-identical proteins through microbial fermentation. The company uses protein-producing microbes and feeds them with plant-based sugars in fermenters. They then recover and purify the cheese proteins, then mix them with plant-based or mineral ingredients such as lipids and sugars.

“Caseins are essential to the quality of cheeses – they are nutritious and provide firmness, texture, and the capacity to melt,” Anne Pitkowski, Bel Group Research and Application Director, said. “Standing Ovation’s technology, combined with our knowledge of the links between structure and function, will enable all these features – and more – to be developed. Our unique cheesemaking expertise will put these advances into practice.”

Standing Ovation is part of a growing cohort of precision fermentation-focused startups building animal identical proteins for food companies to utilize in products such as cheese, milk, and other dairy products. Other startups such as New Culture and Fooditive are creating precision-derived caseins, while industry pioneer Perfect Day has made several products under its brands and partner brands utilizing both its animal-identical casein and whey proteins.

Image credit here.

Germany-Based Mushlabs Scores An Infrastructure Partnership with Bitburger Brewery Group

Hamburg-based biotech startup Mushlabs may have created the perfect storm in its approach to creating a clean, nutrient-rich plant-based meat alternative. The company can hit the ground running without worrying about costly infrastructure and potential distribution partners by applying its proven technology and a sound business approach.

Mushlabs has announced a relationship with Bitburger Brewery Group, a large private brewery in Germany. Bitburger will provide capacity and sidestream byproducts from its beer production as raw materials. Mushlabs intends to enhance and use these local byproducts to cultivate edible mushroom mycelium in a precision fermentation process. The mycelium will be used to produce nutrient-rich, minimally processed foods.

“(Bitburger) has a valuable sidestream that would otherwise get burned to produce energy or go to cattle, but is also not necessarily super stable,” Thibault Godard, Chief Science Officer at Mushlabs, told The Spoon in an interview. “So we are offering them a solution to upcycle in a way that is also better for the planet.”

Godard boils the complex process down to a simple example: “I like the example of coffee. For instance, coffee has 80 to 90% of waste from the crop to the cup. And this is also something where you have valuable nutrients there that you can recycle and produce food. So we are basically taking the leftovers and injecting them into the food system.”

The approach—that is, using mycelium, which has a property that acts as a natural decomposing agent in precision fermentation to create a healthy plant-based protein is what Mushlabs called fulfilling the goal of a “circular economy.”

“In natural ecosystems, fungi recycle nutrients through a specific fermentation process that digests their surrounding biomass,” the company explained in a blog post. “At Mushlabs, we harness this process to produce food from agro- and food industries’ side streams (i.e., spent coffee grounds, fruit peels, and sugarcane bagasse). This is a unique form of food production with many potential applications for the circular economy, yielding tasty meat-alternative products.”

And then there’s the smart business angle. While other companies in similar adjacencies struggle to raise large sums of capital to scale out their facilities with large fermentation tanks, Mushlabs’ partnership with Bitburger will accelerate its growth. Using often underutilized brewing tanks, Mushlabs avoids the cost of new infrastructure. CEO and founder Mazen Rizk acknowledges collocating with Bitburger gives his company a giant boost.

“And not only saving the cost, but it’s also saving the time. Because if we now decide we want to build the facility, I think ordering steel would take you probably a year and a half because there are delays in even ordering steel. Then building a facility is very costly and takes time,” Rizk says.

“When you’re talking about food products. It would be best if you did it in the most economically viable way possible so we can find a sidestream that the mushroom can grow on,” Rizk says. “So part of it is understanding what kind of product you can do, what kind of taste, what kind of nutrition they provide. The other side is understanding which one is economically feasible. How can you produce it at a high yield and low cost to ensure that you have a food product that can go into the market at a price that people can afford?”

In June, the company also boasts a huge financial acknowledgment from the EU’s prestigious EIC Accelerator Program. More than 1,000 startups and small businesses from Europe applied to receive a share of €382 million in total capital. Seventh-four companies each will get funding of up to 17.5 million Euros, with Mushlabs receiving an eight-digit figure. Through the EIC Accelerator program, the EU aims to support technology startups that address societal challenges and drive breakthrough European innovations.

Coming Out of Stealth, Paleo Unveils Six Animal-Free, GMO-Free Varieties of Heme

In 2024, imagine walking into Burger King and ordering a mammoth burger. No, not one that is bigger than your head; this Whopper will taste like the extinct proboscideans that roamed the earth millions of years ago. It’s all part of the magic from a Belgium-based food ingredient company called Paleo.

After two years, Paleo has come out of stealth mode to announce its technology to bring the authentic taste and aroma of meat and fish to plant-based meat and fish alternatives with a non-GMO, animal-free heme. As part of that announcement, the World International Property Organization has published Paleo’s patent application, finally allowing Paleo to share details of its precision fermentation technology. 

Hermes Sanctorum, CEO and co-founder of Paleo: “When we set out to create the ultimate animal-free meat or fish experience, we quickly zeroed in on heme. Without exaggeration, we can say that we cracked the code of heme, allowing us to produce GMO-free heme that’s bio-identical to the most popular meats and tuna – as well as mammoth.”

More about the mammoth burger shortly.

Heme, a precursor to hemoglobin, is an essential molecule found in every living plant and animal. In short, it makes meat taste like meat, giving it its mouthfeel and umami sensation. Paleo has created a bio-identical heme that, through precision fermentation, can be adapted to add a specific taste to beef, pork, chicken, and even fish. Heme is essential when it comes to resembling conventional meat products. Heme is responsible for the taste and color of meat. Before cooking, heme will give meat alternatives a red color that turns brown during cooking. Heme also offers superior nutritional value. The iron in heme is easier for the human body to absorb than iron in vegetables.

In an interview with The Spoon, CEO Sanctorum explains the process: “We make the yeast release the protein to the environment, which means you can separate your protein. It’s a pure protein that you have separated from the yeast cells, making it a non-GMO product. We can produce an animal protein identical to what you find in nature but on top GMO-free. So that’s, I think, our unique proposition.”

“It’s like basically like brewing beer,” Sanctorum goes on to explain. “Instead of making alcohol, it makes a protein that you want. Instead of brewing or making wine, it’s producing the animal heme.”

Although the company has been working on its technology since 2020, its patent announcement is a significant step forward that inches closer to realizing a finished product. Sanctorum expects to have market-ready products in 2023, even with the number of steps that need to be tackled. Given precision fermentation at scale is a cap-ex-heavy investment, one reason to share their patent with the world is to attract investors. To date, Paleo has raised $2.5 million in seed funding and $ 2.5M in seed funding and is working on a Series A round to bring its products to the market and broaden its portfolio. 

Another issue is the breadth of products. The ability to create a variety of hemes may sparkle in a press release, but, as Sanctorum acknowledges, focusing on one area to start is a more prudent approach for a young company. Part of that B2B process is working closely with prospective customers. “A lot will depend on demand from our clients,” he said. “We are talking to big and small food manufacturers like small ones, and it will be all about testing those heme proteins and to see how they behave in their commercial recipes.”

Opening its technology kimono also brings potential challenges for Paleo from other companies working on similar approaches. Impossible Foods filed a lawsuit against Motif Foodworks, claiming the company’s HEMAMI protein derived from precision fermentation infringed on Impossible’s patent for making plant-based burgers containing 0.1% to 5% heme protein. Sanctorum calls the legal battle a “side event” and refuses to let it impede his or Paleo’s vision moving forward.

Back to the mammoth burger. Creating hemes for popular foods of today’s world is obvious, but reaching back hundreds of centuries—the question is why?

“Well, it was basically it started as a challenge to us,” Sanctorum said. “I mean, we were thinking, okay, if we can make the obvious ones, can we do that for an ancient protein that doesn’t exist anymore?”

Perhaps the better answer is, why not?

Mars Teams Up With Perfect Day to Launch Animal-Free Chocolate Bar

Today Mars announced the launch of a new animal-free chocolate under the brand CO2COA. Developed in partnership with precision fermentation specialist Perfect Day, the chocolate is available today via the product’s new website.

While Mars already offers a range of vegan chocolate bars, this is the first bar from a major candy brand that replaces animal dairy with identical proteins produced through precision fermentation. A German startup by the name of QOA announced last year they are using precision fermentation to develop new chocolate, but their focus is on replacing cocoa rather than animal inputs. The Mars deal follows an announcement made by Perfect Day and Betterland Foods in March of an animal-free chocolate bar.

The new candy is available only via a new website and “while supplies last,” which tells me Mars is trialing the concept before committing to a longer-term product launch (and rollout at retail). It’s reminiscent of the toe-in-the-water that Starbucks took with its testing of Perfect Day’s animal-free dairy. My guess is the company will keep a close on customer response and, possibly, eye a wider rollout in time if the response is positive.

For Perfect Day, the Mars deal is yet another in a growing list of partnerships the company has inked with consumer-facing brands to utilize their animal-free dairy in products such as gelato, chocolate milk, and protein powders. The company also continues to periodically add new products under their own consumer brand subsidiary, Urgent Company, adding protein powders late last year and acquiring another ice cream brand, Coolhaus, to add to their ice cream lineup alongside Brave Robot.

Israel’s Remilk Heads to Denmark With Plans for Precision Fermented Milk Production Facility

The challenge for companies focused on developing fermented alternatives to milk-based products that come from cows is to replicate the scale of a dairy farm. A large farm can have up to 15,000 cows, while a small farm will have between 1,000 and 5,000 animals. Cows are milked two to three times per day, with each producing between six and seven gallons daily.

Do the math, and you understand the enormous task facing this new breed of innovators in the alt. dairy space. Among companies in this space, the race is on to build out giant fermentation facilities to meet the potential demand. Remilk, a Tel Aviv-based firm using yeast-based precision fermentation to create a non-animal milk product, announced it would go big in tackling future production needs by securing 750,000 square feet at Kalundborg Denmark’s Symbiosis Project. The company says construction will begin by the end of 2022.

“Remilk has already started high-volume production in several locations around the world. The Danish facility will be our first fully owned facility, and production at this facility, the largest of its kind in the world, will begin as soon as the build-out is complete,” Remilk CEO Aviv Wolff told The Spoon. “Remilk is committed to reinventing the dairy industry in a kind, sustainable way. Eliminating the need for animals is the only way to supply our world’s growing demand without destroying the process.”

While Wolff didn’t provide specifics, he said that Remilk is working with leading consumer brands to craft recipes made with Remilk and believes the end products resulting from those collaborations will be available to consumers soon.

Wolff points to Remilk’s ability to create sustainable animal-free products that do not compromise on taste. Rather than compare his company’s efforts to competitors such as betterland farms, Wolff thinks his competition is milk and milk products that have been around for more than 10,000 years.

“To a large extent, we benchmark ourselves against traditional dairy proteins because that’s what we are looking to replace,” Wolff said. “Remilk can seamlessly replace cow-milk-based ingredients in consumer products because Remilk has the same characteristics, nutrition, and flavor profile with the advantage of being non-animal, thus free of lactose, cholesterol, hormone, and antibiotic residues.”

Remilk is far from alone in the world of precision-fermented dairy. Others include Real Deal Milk, Change Foods, Imagindairy (also in Israel), Formo, and betterland foods. A list of plant-based milk startups would be run several pages.

Fermentation May Be Centuries Old, But It’s Attracting a Whole Bunch of New Money ($1.69 Billion to Be Exact)

You know what they say: everything old is new brewed again.

At least that’s true when it comes to fermentation, that ancient food and beverage production process that is currently an overnight sensation. It is going well beyond the time-honored probiotic-rich staples of sauerkraut, kefir, pickles, miso, yogurt, and kombucha. The process of fermentation is being utilized in the creation of alternative, sustainable proteins to take the place of meat, eggs, seafood, and dairy. And it’s projected to get even more significant in its scope and revenue.

Data in The Good Food Institute’s 2021 State of Fermentation Industry Report points to the growth of fermentation as a traditional means to create probiotic-rich foods and plant-based products. According to the report, a total of $1.69 billion was invested in 54 fermentation-based startups in 2021.

Other data from GFI’s report:

  • Fifteen known startups dedicated to fermentation for alternative proteins were founded in 2021, along with new suppliers focused on fermentation-enabled alternative protein ingredients.
  • Eighty-eight known companies are now dedicated to fermentation-enabled alternative proteins, increasing 20 percent from the number of known companies in 2020.
  • 2021 saw the first growth-stage fundraising in the fermentation industry, including three deals >$200 million.

It’s important to understand that fermentation is not a single process but is three separate processes. Traditional fermentation (used to make pickles, kombucha, and sauerkraut) uses live organisms (such as the fungus Rhizopus to make tempeh or a SCOBY to brew kombucha) to modulate ingredients to create a product rich in flavor and texture. One established company, Miyoko’s Creamery, uses fermentation to make its line of alternative protein dairy products.

 A second process, biomass fermentation, takes advantage of the properties of certain microorganisms that quickly create large quantities of protein. The resulting protein can be used as a standalone product or an ingredient, which is the focus of most companies in this area. An example of a company employing biomass fermentation is SACCHA, a  German company using spent brewer’s yeast to create an alternative vitamin-rich protein that can be used to develop animal-free metal. Colorado-based Meati Foods uses mycelium (a mushroom root) to create a fibrous material that resembles meat.

 Precision fermentation, the third method, is perhaps the segment in this area with tremendous potential and is a focus of major investments. In precision fermentation, microbes create “cell factories” to build specific functional ingredients. Precision fermentation can produce enzymes, flavoring agents, proteins, vitamins, natural pigments, and fats. EVERY Company is an example of this process in which precision fermentation creates a substitute for traditional egg whites.

The GFI chart below shows the different types of fermentation as they relate to alternative proteins and highlights different possible products enabled by each.

One of the most significant stumbling blocks for the more advanced fermentation methods is the buildout of large-scale facilities to tackle production. A growing number of companies are in the process of recently completing or midst such construction, which points to 2023 as a timeframe in which production could begin to fulfill a growing market.

GFI’s report points to these as examples of completed projects and ones in the process of buildout:

  •               The Protein Brewery, Netherlands, completed 2021
  •               The Better Meat Co., California, completed in 2021
  •               Nature’s Fynd, Chicago, targeted for 2022-2023
  •               Mycorena. Sweden, expected to be completed in 2022
  •               Solar Foods, Finland, to be completed in 2022        

 With all the noise about the more advanced forms of fermentation, the value and growth of products in the “traditional fermentation” space have been overlooked. The kombucha market has skyrocketed with a focus on health, especially during the COVID-19 scare. According to Absolute Reports, the global Kombucha market size is estimated to be worth $2.1 billion in 2022 and is forecast to be $6.1 billion by 2028, with a CAGR of 19.7%.

 And an old fermented standby, sauerkraut, also brings in big dollars. According to Verified Market Research, the sauerkraut market was valued at $8.7 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $14.1 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 5.74% from 2020 to 2027.

Betterland Foods Debuts Cow-Free Milk Powered by Perfect Day’s Animal-Identical Protein

Today Perfect Day and betterland foods announced the debut of betterland milk, a new cow-free milk using Perfect Day’s animal-identical whey protein produced via precision fermentation. According to the announcement, the new alt-milk will deliver “the same cooking, whipping, steaming, frothing, and baking functionality” as animal milk.

The partnership with betterland foods follows a familiar playbook for Perfect Day, which has previously gone to market with consumer brands incubated within The Urgent Company (TUC). Like Brave Robot ice cream and Modern Kitchen cream cheese brands, betterland milk will use Perfect Day’s genetically engineered whey (beta-lactoglobulin). However, unlike TUC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Perfect Day, it appears betterland foods is a young startup formed independently of Perfect Day.

That’s not to say that betterland founder Lizanne Falsetto, an experience consumer products founder who previously cofounded thinkThin (a maker of nutrition bars), didn’t create the company with Perfect Day’s cow-free proteins in mind. From the announcement:

“When I saw what Perfect Day founders Ryan and Perumal were doing to cultivate nutritious, more sustainable milk proteins, I felt the pull to not only get back into the industry, but to help build a portfolio of products that taste great, while being better for the planet,” said Falsetto. “That’s when betterland foods was born.”

While this is the first consumer-packaged retail alt-milk product featuring Perfect Day’s protein, Spoon readers might remember that the company has been experimenting with milk alternatives for the past year. Last fall word got out the company trialing a special 2% “barista-blend” version of its alt-milk for Starbucks. I ventured to the east side of Seattle to try it out and found it to be exactly like cow’s milk.

While we’ve seen plant-based milk become a major category in the past few years, most brands have centered around a key ingredient like oat or almond. With the arrival of Perfect Day’s animal-identical whey on the milk aisle, I am curious to see how they – and betterland – message this to stand out from the crowd. When I tried the Starbucks Perfect Day blend, it was clear the coffee giant was still workshopping descriptions and taking surveys to figure it out.

My guess is betterland and Perfect Day will get there, in part they have a CPG veteran who has helped launch a new better-for-you category in gluten free nutrition bars leading the charge.

Betterland foods will offer two varieties of in whole and extra creamy. They will debut the product as the large natural food trade show Expo West next month and will head to retail in the spring.