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precision fermentation

Formo Raises $50 Million to Make Animal-Free Cheese With Precision Fermentation

Berlin-based Formo announced today it had raised $50 million in Series A funding. The investment in the maker of animal-free cheese was led by EQT Ventures, with Elevat3 Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.

The company, which started out as Legendairy Foods but rebranded earlier this year, says it will use the new cash to build a pilot plant, fast-track commercial production, and expand its science team.

From the release:

“With the resulting increase in R&D capacity, Formo plans to expand its product portfolio to represent a wide variety of European dairy specialties such as mozzarella and ricotta, with techniques designed in collaboration with artisan cheesemakers.“

Formo uses a precision fermentation process to make animal-free dairy cheese with animal identical proteins. For cheese, this means first encoding DNA into microorganisms to produce casein and whey. From there, they feed the microbes until they produce enough protein, which is then harvested and combined with other ingredients to make cheese.

“Formo domesticates microorganisms instead of cows, using precision fermentation to create nature-identical dairy products. Formo’s cheeses have the same taste, texture, and functional properties as animal-derived cheeses, but come at a substantially lower cost for the environment, human health, and animal welfare. With microorganisms being up to 20 times more efficient than cows at converting feed into food, Formo can already undercut consumers’ willingness to pay at commercial production scale.“

The company says the $50 million is Europe’s largest series A food tech investment to date. This is true if we’re not counting restaurant tech (and Karma Kitchen’s $317 million series A), but no matter how you slice it, Formo’s latest is impressive and certainly the largest we’ve seen for a precision fermentation startup in Europe.

Melt&Marble Raises €750K Seed Round for its Fermentation-Based Fats

Melt&Marble, formerly known as Biopetrolia, announced today that it has raised a €750,000 (~$876,000 USD) seed round to further develop its fermentation-based fats for plant-based foods. Nordic FoodTech VC led the round with participation from Paulig’s venture arm PINC, Purple Orange Ventures, and Chalmers Ventures.

In addition to the funding, the company is also debuting its new name, branding and direction. Under its previous name Biopetrolia, Melt&Marble used fermentation to create advanced biofuels. But as Anastasia Krivoruchko, Co-Founder and CEO of Melt&Marble explained to me via video chat this week, “We were looking at what our technology could do and saw we produce fatty acids at very high levels.” Additionally, not only were they producing fatty acids, but they could also adjusts the fermented fats to produce a variety of outcomes.

Melt&Marble is an ingredient company, so it will use this ability to manipulate fermented fats to produce a wide range of fats for other plant-based meat manufacturers. It can create fats specifically for plant-based beef, pork other meat analogues. It can also adapt its fat to work better with specific plant-based proteins such as soy, or peas. Because it is tweaking these compounds from the ground up, Melt&Marble can also change the nature of the fats created to deliver different textures, melting points, or even replace bad fats with healthier ones.

Plant-based proteins grab all the headlines, but developing the right kind of fats to go with it is equally as important for meat analogues. Other companies looking to develop plant-based fats include Australia’s Nourish Ingredients, which also uses fermentation to create fats, and Motif Foodworks, which was developing plant-based fats in partnership with the University of Guleph in Canada.

Meat&Marble itself is spun out of research done at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. Krivoruchko said that the company expects to have its first prototype done by the end of the year.

Helaina is Developing Immune-Boosting Breast Milk Through Precision Fermentation

A new start-up called Helaina strives to support parents and newborns through its alternative breast milk developed through precision fermentation. The company is currently in its development phase, and to date, has raised $4 million in funding.

As Laura Katz, the founder of Helaina, explained to me this week, “Our goal is to replicate the immune equivalent proteins found in breast milk.” To develop its alternative breast milk, Helaina is not using cellular cultivation, but is using its own proprietary microbial platform. Through microbial fermentation, proteins are developed that the company says are 99% identical to those found in breastmilk. According to Katz, these proteins can act as antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral agents, and can provide the same immunity for infants that is found in regular breast milk

Helaina is focused predominantly on developing the protein component of breast milk, but Katz said the company will work on the other important components as they grow. When the product is ready to launch, it will likely first be offered in powdered form, with other forms available later on.

A little-known statistic when it comes to breastfeeding is that only 13 percent of all mothers are able to exclusively breastfeed within the first six months of their infant’s life. Most mothers struggle with it at some point, while some parents cannot breastfeed their baby at all. That being said, a few other companies are focused on developing alternative products for infant nutrition.

BIOMILQ cultivates mammary epithelial cells, and grows them in a way that allows them to produce milk. At the beginning of this summer, the company announced it had successfully produced human milk outside of the breast. TurtleTree is using cellular agriculture technology to develop human breast milk, and recently announced its first commercial product would be a protein called lactoferrin.

Helaina is currently working with the FDA to develop a safe product that receives approval. After this step, the company will have a better idea of when it will be able to launch its first product.

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.

Imagindairy Using Precision Fermentation to Create Animal-Free Dairy Proteins

Imagindairy, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that re-creates dairy proteins without the cow, publicly announced itself and its technology today.

In a press release emailed to The Spoon, Imagindairy said that its micro-flora, precision fermentation technology re-creates nature-identical, animal-free versions of whey and casein proteins. These proteins can be used to develop analogs of dairy products such as cheese, milk and yogurt. Imagindairy says these analogs will have the same flavor, texture and nutritional value as conventional dairy products, and will also be lactose-free, and won’t carry the environmental and ethical complications around raising dairy livestock.

There is certainly an appetite for animal-free dairy products. Recent data from The Good Food Institute found that U.S. sales of plant-based cheese grew 42 percent over the past year and the category is now worth $270 million. More than 162 million units of plant-based yogurt were sold in 2020, up 20 percent over the last year. Meanwhile, sales of plant-based plant-based ice cream and frozen novelty was also up 20 percent with 88 million units sold in 2020.

Precision fermentation has been called the third pillar of alternative protein, alongside plant-based and cultured meat. Last year, the Good Food Institute reported that there were 44 companies working on fermentation-based alternative proteins, up from 23 in 2018. The best known is Perfect Day here in the U.S., which already has products made with its technology out in the market via the Brave Robot ice cream brand. In Germany, Formo (formerly Legendairy) said it will unveil its first precision fermented cheese this year. And over in the Asia-Pacific region, Change Foods is working on its own brand on animal-free cheese.

In its press announcement, Imagindairy said its technology can be “readily integrated” into existing dairy food production facilities. The company has raised $1.5 million in Seed funding, led by The Kitchen FoodTech hub with participation from the Israeli Innovative Authority, CPT Capital, New Crop Capital, and Entrée Capital.

Geltor Debuts Animal-Free Collagen For Food and Beverage Markets

Geltor, a startup that bioengineers animal-free proteins, announced today the debut of its vegan collagen product called PrimaColl. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, PrimaColl, which the company claims is the world’s first vegan collagen for food and beverage markets, is a nature-identical replica of poultry collagen derived using precision fermentation technology.

Collagen has lots of health benefits for humans and is especially important for us as we age. Because of this, animal-derived collagen, which is sourced from the bones and other byproducts of farmed animals such as chickens and cows, has become a crucial ingredient in food and beverage markets in recent decades.

But for vegans, traditionally derived collagen is obviously problematic. With no true substitutes on the market up to this point, many consumers abstaining from animal products are forced to use collagen “booster” products which claim to help increase human collagen production, but are not collagen substitutes.

Which is why Geltor sees such a potentially big opportunity (and also why the company has raised eye-popping amounts of capital). With traditional collagen being a $7.5 billion market opportunity, delivering the first-to-market natural replica of animal collagen could be a massive opportunity across a number of different products.

“As a next-generation bioactive, PrimaColl was designed for use in ‘beauty-from-within’ formulations,” Geltor CEO Alex Lorestani told The Spoon via email. “And these could take form in anything from ready-to-drink beverages or powder mixes, to collagen-infused snack foods, gummies, and more.”

One of the biggest opportunities will be nutritional supplements. According to the company, while there have been a number of supplements that claim to boost human production of collagen, there are not any widely available replicas of animal-free collagen that include the less common amino acid core of Type 21 collagen.

“Like most collagens, natural production of Type 21 decreases into adulthood,” said Geltor co-founder and CTO Nick Ouzounov in the release. “The functional collagen core of Type 21 was selected in the biodesign of PrimaColl due to its important role in interacting with other collagen types, and signaling activity for additional collagen production.”

According to the release, the company has started production of PrimaColl through a manufacturing partnership with Swiss contract manufacturer Lonza Specialty Ingredients (LSI), and is building inventory this summer with plans for wide commercial availability this fall. The company, which had interest from dozens of companies who got an early preview of the product, already has some partners who are making products with PrimaColl, Lorestani told The Spoon.

The release of PrimaColl is a big milestone for Geltor, a company that was founded in 2015 and was an early member of Indiebio. Like fellow Indiebio graduates Clara and Perfect Day, Geltor is one of a group of companies that have been building animal-identical proteins using microbial fermentation technology.

LegenDairy Rebrands to Formo, Announces Plans to Bring Products to Market

LegenDairy, a precision fermentation alterative dairy company, announced today that it has rebranded to the name Formo, and that it will focus on consumer-facing products with plans to unveil its first products later this year.

To create its animal-free milk proteins, Formo uses microorganisms instead of cows. These undisclosed microorganisms are first encoded with the DNA sequences of milk proteins. A fermenter is then used to grow the cells, which are harvested when enough protein has been raised. From this point, the cultivated milk protein can be used to make cheese.

Plant-based ingredients, like different fats and carbohydrates, are added to the milk proteins to create the base of cheese products. Like traditional cheese, the product is heated until it turns into curd. After this step, a wide spectrum of cheese products can be created from this base and packaged as fresh or ripened to create a stronger flavor.

Formo shared that it is first focusing on specialty European cheeses, like ricotta and a few ripened/aged kinds of cheese. The company will launch its products where customers are most excited about it (based on its upcoming consumer acceptance study) and where it can get regulatory approval.

In addition to Formo, a few other companies use precision fermentation to create alternative dairy and cheese products. Perfect Day applies its precision fermentation process through its spinoff brand, Brave Robot, to create an animal-free ice cream that is molecularly identical to real dairy. Change Foods uses precision fermentation to develop its cheddar and mozzerella, and plans on launching its product on the market in 2023.

Formo is currently expanding its team of scientists and executives in preparation for its initial product presentation in Europe this year, and market launch in 2023. Prior to the launch, the company will host a tasting this summer for its alternative cheese products with Ricky Saward, the first plant-based Michelin star chef.

Podcast: Arturo Elizondo on Hatching A Startup That Makes Eggs Without the Chicken

If you were to ask Clara Foods CEO Arturo Elizondo what came first, the chicken or the egg, the answer you’d get is probably not the weighty philosophical waxing you might expect from a former intern for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer.

Instead, chances are you’d probably hear about how it’s time to do away with the factory farming system we currently use to produce the trillion plus eggs consumed annually and how he may just have the answer for how to do that.

That answer would be Clara Foods, the company Elizondo cofounded with Dave Anchel in 2014 after the two struck up a conversation at a conference. It wasn’t long after that first conversation before the two were working on their idea for using microbial fermentation to create eggs without the chicken as part of biotech accelerator Indiebio‘s inaugural cohort.

Fast forward almost seven years and Clara released their first product in 2020 – a digestive supplement. The company plans on launching its second product later this year, a protein targeted at protein beverage market. After that, the company will release it’s flagship product, an egg white replacement.

But Elizondo doesn’t plan to stop there. When I talked to the Clara Foods CEO for the Food Tech Show, one of the first questions I asked was whether Clara’s technology could emulate more than just a chicken egg. The answer is yes.

“We wanted to have a real kick ass platform that is not just a chicken egg plant protein platform, or an egg protein platform, but a true animal protein production platform, so that we can flex in and out of different products,” said Elizondo.

From there, he and Clara hope to bring forth new flavors and combinations that aren’t even possible with old fashioned eggs.

“We’re truly entering the age of molecular food,” said Elizondo. “Not just molecular gastronomy, but instead how do we leverage the molecular element of it in producing the next generation of ingredients to build food 2.0 with new textures, new properties, new flavors that are not even possible to achieve right now with our current animals as a technology?”

If you’d like to hear about our chicken-less egg future, you can listen to the podcast below, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or on wherever you get your podcasts.

Making Honey Without The Bee: A Conversation With Darko Mandich

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that bee colonies are collapsing around the world due to a number of persistent threats such as global warming, pesticides and yes, murder hornets.

And while that may present a challenge to the $7 billion honey industry, the focus on honey production is itself problematic for the broader bee ecosystem, since farmed honeybees compete with wild bees for food and ultimately can hurt biodiversity.

All of which is why a Serbian bee industry executive by the name of Darko Mandich became fascinated with the idea of making honey without the bees. If this sounds crazy to you, don’t worry: Darko’s soon-to-be cofounder, Aaron Schaller, initially thought it was crazy too when they first discussed the idea.

But eventually, Schaller (a molecular scientist from the University of Cal Berkeley) saw the potential in bee-less honey and soon after, MeliBio was born. From there, the nascent startup pitched their concept to Big Idea Ventures and was accepted into the future food accelerator.

Now the company is busy developing its technology to create a honey that replicates the taste, texture and mouthful of real honey, all without bees. As Darko tells me on this podcast, MeliBio is using fermentation to essentially recreate the process through which bees convert nectar to honey. The startup hopes to have its first product on the market by late 2021.

You can listen to the full conversation with Darko Mandich by clicking play below or by subscribing to the Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and leave a review if you like the show). You can also download the episode directly to your computer by clicking here. And, as always, you can always find more food tech news and podcasts at The Spoon.

Change Foods Raises $875,000 for Its Precision Fermentation Cheese

Alternative protein company Change Foods has raised $875,000 in an oversubscribed pre-seed round of funding, surpassing its initial target of $600,000. Green Queen Media was first to break the news. Participating in the round were Twitter’s Asia-Pacific VP Maya Hari, abillionveg founder Vikas Garg, game developer Tom Crago, and existing investors Newstead and Klar. 

Change Foods plans to use the funds to scale up its precision fermentation technology, which the company is using to develop an initial prototype of an animal-free cheese it says will look, taste, and cook like dairy-based cheese.

Most alt-cheese products currently available still fall well below the bar in terms of replicating the real thing in terms of taste, texture, and functionality. That’s largely because those products don’t contain the casein compound, which is found in cow’s milk and is an essential ingredient of cheese. To get that compound and others, Change Foods genetically modifies microorganisms and ferments them with sugar in a process known as precision fermentation. 

Speaking to Green Queen, Change Foods founder David Bucca said better precision fermentation technology could lead to a less vulnerable dairy supply chain, since products can be made locally, have a longer shelf life, and don’t require cold chain infrastructure to transport. 

Fermentation has been called “the next pillar” of alternative protein alongside plant-based and cell-based proteins. Precision fermentation is one method within that larger fermentation category, and is also used by companies like Perfect Day and Impossible Foods. 

To start, Change Foods is developing mozzarella and cheddar cheeses, though it plans to branch out into other dairy products in the future. The plan is to sell products via B2C channels by 2023. 

In the meantime, Change Foods will also use some of the pre-seed funding to expand its core team. It also has ambitions to raise a $4 million seed round in 2021.

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

Ahh, the magic of fermentation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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