In part three of our gallery of highlights from FoodNavigator-USA's recent trip to Israel, we profile startups exploring everything from high-tech indoor vanilla cultivation to the manufacture of no-sugar-added snack bars using compression and ultrasonic waves instead of sugary binders.
Vanilla Vida is addressing the huge mismatch between supply and demand in the natural vanilla market via an indoor growing platform for vanilla planifolia plants with significantly higher yields of vanillin – the primary flavor component of cured vanilla beans - and a dramatically reduced curing time. Read more HERE.
Animal-free dairy co Imagindairy - one of a new breed of startups producing dairy proteins via precision fermentation – is aiming to bring beta-lactoglobulin (whey protein) to the US market next year, said co-founder and CEO Dr. Eyal Afergan.
“We use filamentous fungi and yeast as expression systems. We started with [whey protein] beta-lactoglobulin, but we are aiming to develop the whole range of milk proteins, including casein proteins and [whey protein] alpha lactalbumin.”
Asked about the scale up plan, he said: “First we’ll work with a CMO to scale up, and we are working on a GRAS determination and targeting next year to launch in the US market with beta lactoglobulin, and then later on, we'll build our own facility.”
As to whether it’s more efficient to produce dairy proteins in plants or microbes, he said much depends on the downstream processing: “In our case, we designed our organism to secrete the protein into the media, so [the downstream process is] a very simple separation. Another advantage is that we’re growing in a very controlled environment.”
He added: “We believe we have the technology that will allow us to play in the b2b business, building partnerships with dairy and big CPG companies, who have the resources and the understanding of the consumer.”
As for feedstocks, said Dr Afergan, who has raised $28m to date and now employs just over 20 people, “We can move from one carbon and nitrogen source to another. Our conversion rate of carbon is almost 100% whereas cows are so inefficient. But if you want to reach prosperity, you better be close to a cheap carbon and nitrogen source.”
As for the term ‘animal-free’ dairy, he said, “At the moment, this is the language that most of the industry uses, although I'm not sure it is right. It’s one of the challenges for the industry, along with where to put these products on the shelf? In the plant-based section? In the dairy section? Or in a new section?”
Buoyed by a $120m series B funding round, animal-free dairy startup Remilk is planning what it claims is the world’s largest precision fermentation facility in Kalundborg, Denmark. Check out our recent video HERE.
Wilk Technologies (formerly Biomilk) is working with human and bovine mammary cells that ‘lactate’ to produce high-value ingredients including bioactive peptides, lipids such as MFGM and human milk oligosaccharides that have not been commercialized before, said Nathaniel Benchemhoun, VP business development.
“We just disclosed that we made human and bovine milk fat, with application opportunities in everything from infant nutrition and traditional dairy products to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.”
Torr FoodTech deploys an intriguing new approach to creating snack bars by deploying pressure and ultrasonic energy instead of sugary binders to ‘weld’ natural ingredients together. Read more HERE.
Amai Proteins combines agile-integrative computational protein design (AI-CPD) with precision fermentation to create ‘designer’ sweet proteins using synthetic biology to program yeast to express proteins hundreds of times sweetener than sugar. Read our interview with founder and CEO Dr Ilan Samish HERE.
Cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms plans a soft launch in Singapore and Israel of a thin cut beef steak next year made at its pilot plant in Rehovot, Israel, and intends to start building a larger facility towards the end of the year with a view to a US launch in 2024, says CEO Didier Toubia.
Cultivated meat startup SuperMeat is currently producing meat at a plant in Rehovot, which “has the capacity essentially to support us in working with our partners, developing different kinds of applications and validating them before market launch,” says CEO Ido Savir.
“Then we're working with different partners in the US [with a view to] co-manufacture there to do the first run of products in the market, which we expect will be in early 2024, and we believe by then we'll get regulatory approval. Alongside that we're intending to build our large industrial scale plant in the US.” Watch our video with Savir.
One of the best-funded players in the space, cultivated meat startup Believer Meats (formerly Future Meat Technologies) is building a 200,000 sq ft commercial scale production facility in Wilson, North Carolina, which it claims will be the "largest cultivated meat production center in the world with the capacity to produce up to 10,000 tons of any species of meat."
The firm deploys Non GMO technology developed by biomedical engineer Professor Yaakov Nahmias that it claims helps it achieve higher-density cell cultures and more efficient use of media than rivals in the nascent space. Watch our video with Prof. Nahmias.
