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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Fruit Cells, Space Bread, and Cultured Meat Cartridges: Deep Space Food Challenge Announces Phase 1 Winners

On planet Earth, we face the challenge of feeding a rapidly growing population that is set to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. In space, we face the challenge of feeding astronauts traveling through the galaxy for an extended period of time. Novel and innovative food technology could offer viable solutions in both realms.

For the first time ever, NASA and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) have come together this year to host the Deep Space Food Challenge. Companies competing in the challenge must be able to offer a solution to feeding at least four astronauts on a three-year space mission. The solutions should be able to achieve the greatest amount of food output (that is palatable and nutritious) with minimal input and waste. In addition to being used in space, the solution must also improve food accessibility on Earth.

This week, the winners of Phase 1 were announced:

MANUFACTURED FOODS

  • Astra Gastronomy
  • Beehex
  • BigRedBites
  • Bistromathic
  • Cosmic Eats
  • SIRONA NOMs
  • Space Bread
  • µBites
  • ALSEC Alimentos Secos SAS
  • Electric Cow
  • Solar Foods

BIO CULTURE FOODS

  • Deep Space Entomoculture
  • Hefvin
  • Mission: Space Food
  • KEETA
  • Natufia x Edama

PLANT GROWTH

  • Far Out Foods
  • Interstellar Lab
  • Kernel Deltech
  • Nolux
  • Project MIDGE
  • RADICLE-X
  • Space Lab Cafe
  • AMBAR
  • Enigma of the Cosmos
  • JPWORKS SRL
  • LTCOP
  • Team π

Many companies that were selected as Phase 1 winners use technologies that have steadily gained popularity in the food tech space, like 3D printing, using bioreactors for cultured protein, and vertical farming. In-demand “future food” ingredients like fungi, microbes, cultured cells/meat, and insects were also popular amongst competitors.

Out of the 28 winners, here are some of our favorites:

Beehex (Columbus, Ohio) – Some of you may remember Beehex for their work on a 3D pizza printer for NASA. For this competition, Beehex is proposing a UFF (Universal Food Fabricator) which can dehydrate plants and cultured meats into powder form foods, store them into hermetically sealed cartridges for 5+ years, and 3D print with the stored food in cartridges when needed.

Deep Space Entomoculture (Somerville, Massachusetts) – In this company’s proposed food system, dry-preserved insect cells will be brought up into space. Using a suspension bioreactor, the insect cells, along with other ingredients, will be reactivated and used to create traditional meat-like analogs.

Space Bread (Hawthorne, Florida) – As the name aptly suggests, this company’s tech allows for crew members to create bread in space. This food system includes a multifuntional plastic bag that is used to store and combine ingredients, and then bake a roll.

Mission Space Food: This company is making a system that will cultivate meat in space using pluripotent stem cells using cell cryopreservation and bioreactor. The creators say the system can can grow beef as well as be adapted to grow other meats such as pork or lamb.

AMBAR – (Bucaramanga, Colombia) – Operating as a small-scale ecosystem, AMBAR’s growing cabinet contains different compartments for various plants. Within this system, both terrestrial and aquatic are able to be grown for food.

Hefvin (Bethesda, Maryland) – This company produces berries by growing fruit cells in a nutrient rich media. Spherification (the culinary process used to shape liquid into squishy spheres) is used to encase different cells to create a full berry, complete with skin and pulp.

Space Cow: (Germany) – this company makes a system converts CO2 and waste streams straight into food, with the help of a food grade micro-organisms and 3D printing.

Each U.S. winner of Phase 1 has been awarded $25,000 to continue working on their solution and is invited to continue on to the Phase 2 competition.

Solar Foods Receives €10M to Scale Production of its Protein Made Out of Air

Solar Foods, which literally makes protein out of air, announced today that it has received €10 million (~$11.98 million USD) in funding from the The Finnish Climate Fund. The subordinated load will go towards revving up commercial-scale production of the company’s product, Solein. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Solar Foods to €35 million (~$41.6 million USD).

Based in Finland, Solar Foods uses a combination of captured carbon dioxide, bacteria and electricity to create Solein, which can make multiple food items including alternative proteins. A big promise of Solein’s is its narrower impact on the planet than traditional animal agriculture or even plant-based protein. It doesn’t require land or water, and is not dependent on weather. According to today’s press announcement, Solar Foods said that Solein creates roughly one percent of the greenhouse gas emissions of meat protein and 20 percent of those from plant protein production.

The technology was borne out of research from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and LUT University of Finland. Solein is now in the commercialization stage, and the new funding will be used to build a pilot production facility. The new facility will include a food bar and is scheduled to start operations in early 2023.

The nothingness of air is really turning into something in the alternative protein space. In addition to Solar Foods, the aptly named Air Protein does much the same thing and recently raised $32 million. Deep Branch calls itself a carbon dioxide recycling company because it turns CO2 into protein for animal feed, and recently raised nearly $10 million. And Swedish researchers at RISE have developed technology to turn air into fat.

For more on this nascent science and protein sector, check out our The Spoon Plus Insider Guide to Air Protein.

Deep Branch Raises €8M to Turn Air Into Animal Feed

Deep Branch, which calls itself “a carbon dioxide recycling company,” announced today that it has completed a Series A investment round of €8 million (~$9.5 million USD). The round was led by Novo Holdings and DSM Venturing and also included participation from Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures and Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital. 

The funding will go towards completing Deep Branch’s Scale-Up Hub, a production facility at the Brightlands Chemlot Campus in the Netherlands where the company will make the first pilot-scale batches of its Proton product.

Proton is Deep Branch’s alternative protein ingredient for animal feed, and a product that aims to help make the animal farming industry more sustainable. Via a gas fermentation process, the company turns CO2 into a protein ingredient that Deep Branch says is comparable in nutritional profile to fishmeal, which is a standard in the animal feed industry. It is also, the company says, cost-competitive with other types of animal feed on the market.

Batches of Proton will first be validated nutritionally with Europe’s leading feed producers BioMar (a large aquafeed producer) and AB Agri (a poultry feed producer). 

The new funding will also go towards designing the UK-headquartered company’s first commercial-scale production facility. For now, Deep Branch is focused on finding the right location for that facility, with Norway a top contender. The goal is for the company to reach commercial production of Proton by 2023. 

Creating protein ingredients via gas fermentation is small-but-growing space that also includes Air Protein, Solar Foods, and NovoNutrients. Like Deep Branch, NovoNutrients also makes alternative animal feed by turning industrial CO2 waste into protein.  

Deep Branch has also in the past received funding from Innovate UK, Municipality of Rotterdam, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program.

Solar Foods Gets $5.2M to Commercialize Protein Made From Air

Finnish startup Solar Foods has been granted €4.3 million (~$5.2 million USD) in financing from government organization Business Finland. The new funding follows a Series A fundraise from September and brings Solar Foods’ total amount raised since the company began in 2017 to €24.8 million (~$30 million USD). 

These new funds will enable Solar Foods to open a new manufacturing facility and, more importantly, start to commercialize food products made from its Solein ingredient, an edible protein made from air and electricity.

To make Solein, also referred to as “air protein,” Solar Foods captures carbon dioxide from the air and combines it with bacteria to form single-celled proteins. The process has some noted advantages over other forms of alternative protein in that it doesn’t rely on irrigation, land, or good weather to function. The company has already demonstrated it can make multiple food products, including alt-meat items, with Solein. Another additional advantage of air protein is that in the inputs — carbon dioxide — are not finite.

Solar Foods’ major competitor in the air protein arena is a U.S.-based company simply called Air Protein, which is developing its own consumer-facing products for retail and restaurant partnerships. Elsewhere, the air protein market remains a pretty niche one, though commercialization of these companies’ products could change that.

For its part, Solar Foods said it expects its manufacturing facility to be operational by 2022. The company said its next step is to “finalise funding for the demonstration factory investment.” It is due to set the official location for that factory in the coming weeks. 

Solar Foods Raises an Additional €15M, Closes Series A Round

Solar Foods, an air-protein company based out of Finland, announced this week it has closed out its Series A round with €15 million (~$17.8 million USD) in new financing. The investment was led by Fazar Group with participation from Bridford Investments Limited, Agronomics Limited, Lifeline Ventures, and CPT Capital. It brings the entire Series A round to €18.5 million, and Solar Foods’ total funding to $24.9 million (USD).

The company says this new funding round will enable it to move forward with the commercialization of Solein, its edible protein made from air and electricity. Also known in the food tech vernacular as “air protein,” this approach involves capturing carbon dioxide from the air and combining it with bacteria to form single-celled proteins.

Solar Foods plans to produce its own consumer-facing food items out of this protein, and is building out a new production facility in order to do that. The new funds will go towards making that facility, which Solar says is in the permitting stage, a reality. Per this week’s press release, this forthcoming facility is “designed to include the Solein Experience Hub and a future-food bar to provide citizens with an entirely new level of transparency in food production.”

Sci-fi as it may sound, there are are some benefits to protein made from air that make it a noteworthy new entrant to the alt-protein space. For starters, it doesn’t use any finite environmental resources like land or water, nor does it rely on animals in any way. It can also be produced anywhere in the world, including tough arctic or desert climates, because the processes isn’t dependent on outdoor elements.

Solar Foods’ main competitor right now is a U.S.-based company simply called Air Protein that uses a similar approach to creating, uh, air protein. Unlike Solar, however, Air Protein is exploring B2B partnerships in foodservice along with retail opportunities. 

All that said, the air protein space is so new it will be a little while yet before we’re buying energy bars, powders, and other items made with the stuff. For its part, Solar Foods says it expects its production plant to be operational by 2022, and to commercialize Solein in the fourth quarter of that year. 

At last check, the whole of the alternative protein space has received over $1 billion in investment so far in 2020, with over $907 million going to plant-based protein and more than $290 million to cell-based protein. Air protein does not yet have its own special designation as a cateogry. But if companies like Solar can reach their milestones around commercialization and get their products onto consumers’ plates, that could change, and sooner rather than later. 

The UK Launches Nine Ag and Food Tech Projects, Including ‘Air Protein’ Consortium Called REACT-FIRST

Today the United Kingdom announced a total of nine projects that will receive a total of £24 million (~$30 million USD) in funding to help accelerate the advancement of zero-emission farming and greater food sovereignty within the UK.

The organization leading the overall effort is UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) under what is called the Transforming Food Production challenge. Per today’s announcement, the challenge “aims to set food production systems on the trajectory to net zero emissions by 2040 producing food in ways that are more efficient, resilient and sustainable.”

One of the new projects that will receive funding is called REACT-FIRST, a consortium led by air protein startup Deep Branch Biotechnology. REACT-FIRST will build a scalable route towards protein generation using CO2 inputs and a process generally described by the industry as gas fermentation. The initiative will be comprised of 10 industry and academic partners that will essentially build out a research and scale protein value chain around Deep Branch’s technology.

This value chain and its various partners will look something like the graphic above, which was provided by REACT-FIRST. In this new scaled value chain, Drax, a single-site renewable energy generator will provide captured CO2 and Deep Branch’s technology will convert it to into a novel single-cell protein called Proton.

From there, the Proton SCP will either be converted to fish or poultry feeds with the help of BioMar (large aquafeed producer) or AB Agri (large poultry feed producer). Researchers from the University of Stirling and Nottingham Trent University will work on nutrition assessment. Retailer Sainsbury and others develop ways to scale the production of this new feed.

Deep Branch is one of a small cohort of new startups that have launched over the past few years focused on developing protein using a process called gas fermentation (check out Spoon Plus report on the topic here). Others include Air Protein, Solar Foods and NovoNutrients. Last year, the European Space Agency started working with Solar Foods to develop the technology for use in space to feed astronauts.

Other projects within this broad initiative from the United Kingdom include everything from autonomous robotic farming systems (Robot Highways led by Saga Robotics) to hydroponic grow systems (Production at the Point of Consumption led by Evogro) to new algae grow systems for food production in deserts (AGRI-SATT led by Feed Algae). Each project consists of a funding for research and a variety of partners to help accelerate the time to market and scaling of the technologies.

Solar Foods Will Start Selling Gas-Fermented Protein by 2021

Making protein from thin air may sound like something out of science fiction, but it’s exactly what the Helsinki, Finland-based company Solar Foods is doing. They use a technique called gas fermentation to create edible protein using only two inputs: air and electricity.

A few months ago we got to interview Solar Foods CEO Pasi Vainikka and learned that the company was gearing up for an initial product launch in 2021. By 2022 they plan to build a factor factory that could make 50 million meals worth of their protein — called solein — per year.

It seems Solar Foods is sticking to their timeline — and even accelerating it. This weekend The Guardian reported that the Finnish company plans to sell 50 million meal’s worth of solein in supermarkets within two years (so, by 2021). The solein will apparently look and taste like flour and cost €5 ($5.64) per kilo. It will be used as an ingredient to add protein to food products, and can also apparently be woven into fibers to mimic meat or bread.

Solar Foods plans to apply to the EU for a novel food license by the end of this year so that they can stay on track to begin commercial production in 2021. They’ve already started pre-engineering on their factory.

While I’m all for making protein for unexpected sources, I wonder if this timeline is a little ambitious. Solar Foods has a couple of obstacles to contend with that might make their vision to put solein in 50 million supermarket meals in the next two years a little… tricky.

The first hurdle is regulation. The European Commission describes novel food as “derived from new production processes (UV-treated food (milk, bread, mushrooms, and yeast.))” Solein is made by genetically engineered bacteria. That certainly falls under the umbrella of new production processes, but the EU is notoriously cautious of GMO’s, so they might be hesitant to approve solein. At the very least, hoping for a less than two-year turnaround for regulatory approval is… optimistic.

The second hurdle for Solar Foods will be consumer acceptance. Will people want to eat protein that’s made from carbon dioxide processed through bacteria? It doesn’t sound terribly appetizing. Then again, according to Vainikka solein will have quite a neutral flavor and appearance, so maybe consumers wouldn’t even know.

Regardless of whether they meet their 2021 production goals, Solar Foods is on track to be the first company to bring gas fermented protein to market. But they won’t be the last. In the U.S. Kiverdi and are Novo Nutrients transforming CO2 into products like oils and fish food. Across the pond, U.K.-based Deep Branch Biotechnology is making animal feed out of the CO2 in industrial waste gas.

Gas fermentation could have implications far beyond the feed lots or the grocery store. Solar Foods is working with the European Space Agency to make a prototype device which could make protein for space missions. So come 2021 (or, you know, later), you could soon theoretically be eating the same diet as an astronaut. Talk about science fiction.

Podcast: Making Food Out of Thin Air

If you’re a foodtech nerd like me, chances are you’ve seen a few articles lately about a small group of startups working on a new technique to essentially food “out of thin air”. What makes this technology even more intriguing is it creates a new food source that is entirely disconnected from agriculture-based resources – yes, both animal AND plant-based inputs – to create proteins with a negligible impact on our the environment. The method they use is called “gas fermentation”.

Our own Catherine Lamb had a great piece diving into the tech behind gas fermentation and looking at the companies working on creating products for embryonic market. I found myself so fascinated by this new method of creating protein that I decided to invite the CEO of Solar Foods, Pasi Vainikka, onto a podcast so I could learn a little more about this space and just when we can expect food created with this new process to hit our plates.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking play below, through Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast app, or just by downloading it direct to your machine.

The Future of Protein Might be ‘Gas Fermentation,’ or Growing Food Out of Thin Air

We know that relying on animals — especially methane-producing cows — for the bulk of our protein is unsustainable. But creating protein alternatives in labs or out of plants can also have a significant environmental cost.

What about if we nixed the agricultural bits altogether and just made protein out naturally occuring elements in the air around us? Sounds like science fiction, but Finnish company Solar Foods is working to do just that. The company is creating a new platform for food production using two inputs: air and electricity.

Solar Foods’ technology captures CO2 and water from the air and introduces them to genetically modified bacteria, which form single-celled proteins the company calls ‘Solein.’

Founded in 2017, Solar Foods came about when its CEO Pasi Vainikka, who was in charge of the largest renewable energy resource program in Finland, wanted to develop new technology to push the world towards carbon neutrality. He discovered that one big way to sequester carbon was by making it into food.

As Vainikka explained it, their technology is similar to what Impossible Foods is doing to create its heme or how Perfect Day is making milk without cows. Only instead of feeding sugar solutions to the microbes, as those two startups are doing, Solar Foods feeds them carbon dioxide and hydrogen extracted from the air.

Motif Ingredients and Sustainable Bioproducts are two other companies using microbes to spin out protein, though they also don’t rely on CO2 as the main input. “We are a branch parallel to [them],” said Vainikka. “Not sugar fermentation, but gas fermentation.”

Not the sexiest of names, admittedly. For the less nerdy folks, though, Vainikka said he also calls their process “making food from air.” In fact, visit the Solar Foods lab in Finland and you (yes, you) could actually breathe into their device and make protein.

By disconnecting completely from agriculture, animal and otherwise, Solar Foods can produce protein with a negligable environmental footprint. As it’s not reliant on irrigation, feed, or weather, Solar Foods’ production capacity is also pretty much indefinite.

The technology is way beyond the theoretical stage. As of now, Solar Foods can produce one kilogram of protein per day. The company is also in the early stages of constructing a full-scale factory, filing for patents on their organisms, and starting food application tests.

It raised €2 million (~$2,273,000) in funding from Lifeline Ventures last year. In terms of timing, the company plans to have a global commercial launch of Solein in 2021 and, by 2022, is hoping to scale up to produce enough protein for 50 million meals per year.

Vainikka may have established Solar Foods to make the Earth carbon neutral, but one of the main applications for his technology is actually space travel. The company is working with the European Space Agency to make a prototype device which could theoretically be used to sustain astronauts on a mission to Mars.

Launching their technology into outer space makes things a lot more complicated for Solar Foods. To function on a spacecraft their protein has to last seven years, according to Vainikka. Since the contained environment of a spaceship is a closed loop, the platform will also have to function off of recirculated water and CO2 sourced from inside the ship, as well as recycled energy. “We need super efficient circulation of these factors,” explained Vainikka.

Here on Earth, Vainikka hasn’t yet decided on the best application for Solein. It might be used in a meal replacement product à la Soylent, or even in the Impossible burger as a more sustainable alternative to soy. He told us that Solar Foods will be a protein supplier for food producers and isn’t looking to create their own branded consumer goods.

Photo: Kiverdi.

Gas fermentation may sound kind of out there, but actually Solar Foods is part of a nascent group of startups using carbon dioxide and electricity to make food. Based in San Francisco, Kiverdi is using microbes to upcycle CO2 into edible products like palm oils and proteins. Nearby, Novo Nutrients is leveraging a similar technology to turn CO2 into feed for aquaculture farms. In the U.K., Deep Branch Biotechnology is also focused on animal feed, making single cell proteins out of CO2 in industrial waste gas. Vainikka also pointed out a few university research groups, including ones in Ghent and Nottingham, U.K., which are working on a similar technology.

While gas fermentation makes a lot of sense for space travel, I could also see it having a significant environmental effect here on Earth. Demand for protein is skyrocketing: ResearchandMarkets.com projects that the global protein market will grow from $49.8 billion in 2019 to $70.7 billion in 2025. The world’s population is also projected to hit almost 10 billion by 2050. Combine those, and it means we’ll need to find protein wherever we can — especially if it can replace less sustainable ingredients (like meat) and sequester carbon in the process.

Three Companies Feeding the Global Protein Frenzy with Microbes, Air, and Yeast

With the population set to skyrocket to over 9 billion by 2050, companies are scrambling to find new ways to feed our demand for protein in a sustainable (read: non-animal-based) way.

Many are turning to plants, transforming them into everything from burgers to yogurt to scrambled eggs. But when it comes to protein, there are several companies thinking outside the plant kingdom and turning to surprising sources to create these energy-packed building blocks:

Microbes

Sustainable Bioproducts has developed fermentation technology based off of their studies of the extremophile microbes (which can thrive even in, er, extreme conditions) in Yellowstone’s volcanic springs. The company’s scientists replicate the microbes in labs and feed them starches and glycerin. Out comes protein. The microbes’ output is meant to be a versatile building block — it can be savory or sweet, liquid or powder — which can be used to make meat or dairy alternatives.

The protein may come from a lab, but Sustainable Bioproduct’s technology is very different than cellular agriculture (the science behind cell-based meat), which uses animal tissue.

Earlier this week, the Chicago-based company announced a $33 million Series A funding round, led by Silicon Valley-based venture fund 1955 Capital with participation from the venture arms of Archer Daniels Midland and Danone, a climate-focused tech fund backed by Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and others. But don’t rush out to purchase microbe protein just yet — according to the Wall Street Journal we’re still a few years away from sampling Sustainable Bioproducts’ protein.

Yeast

Similar to Sustainable Bioproducts, Perfect Day uses a sort of fermentation process (feeding sugar to genetically modified yeast and bacteria) to create protein. Only instead of making a versatile building block, they’re focused on two very specific proteins: casein and whey, which are two main “ingredients” that make milk taste — and function — like milk.

Combined, the two create a cow-free dairy product to be used to make everything from cheese to yogurt to ice cream. In 2017, Perfect Day pivoted from a B2C to a B2B model, and at the end of last year, the startup partnered with Archer Daniels Midland to scale up the implementation of their technology. Their first product will be whey protein, slated to come to market in the next few years.

Image Credit: JAA TÄMÄ KUVA

Thin Air (sort of)

Before founding Finnish company Solar Foods, researchers from Lappeenranta University of Technology and the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland created a single cell protein in a lab using only water, electricity, carbon dioxide, and small organisms in the environment.

Solar Foods recently snagged €2 million (~$2,273,000) in funding from Lifeline Ventures, and is working with the European Space Agency to create a bioreactor that can make food in outer space to feed colonies on Mars. On Earth, the bioreactors could be a new food source that doesn’t put stress on our existing systems.

We don’t know exactly what Solar Food’s protein could be used for (Meat alternatives? Protein shakes? Soylent-like complete meals?), but the company has indicated it expects commercial protein production to start by 2021.

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No question — the concept of making protein out of microbes or literal air is fascinating. But as with cell-based meat, I have to wonder about the energy costs — and the cost costs. How much energy does it take to run these new protein sources? And how long will it take before creating protein out of these sources is cost-competitive with making protein from plants?

Of course, if climate change severely reduces agricultural input, as some are predicting it will, then growing soy and wheat might be a lot trickier, and we might have to turn to making protein from the air, extremophile microbes, and animal tissue in a lab. But in the nearer term, these technologies have the potential to feed areas that don’t have access to legitimately delicious plant-based foods — or are struggling to produce enough food, such as communities affected by famine or drought.

It’ll likely be a while before we see (or taste) this technology in our homes or on our grocery shelves. Until then, we’ll have to feed our hunger for sustainable protein with plants. Good thing there are plenty of options.