Animal-based products have a familiar taste and texture, and recreating that with plant-based alternatives has been a challenge for some companies.
Dairy in particular is an area where you need to get a “creamy” texture without using real cream. Cultivate Biosciences, a Swiss biotech food startup, says it has solved this problem by developing a yeast cream that is derived from a specific type of oleaginous yeast and mimics the texture and mouthfeel of traditional cream. There is.
The company raised a pre-seed round of $1.5 million in 2022. At the time, the company was developing fat-rich ingredients with the texture and stability of dairy-free products, which could also replace additives and maintain taste quality.
The company's technology includes yeast biomass fermentation. Unlike precision fermentation, which attempts to replicate proteins at the molecular level, biomass fermentation uses high protein content and rapid growth of microorganisms to produce protein-rich foods. Lucie Rein, chief commercial officer at Cultivated Biosciences, says the method is non-GMO and easily scalable. Rein joined the company in March 2023.
Lane explained that yeast cream contains fat, protein and fiber, all derived from yeast, and is characterized by a “microstructure” of yeast fat droplets similar to milk fat droplets. Cultivated Biosciences designs end products used in consumer products such as coffee creamers, milk, and ice cream.
The company unveiled its first proof-of-concept coffee creamer in December, but Lane said it's pretty difficult to get it right. That's because when you add creamer to your coffee, you need to maintain its creamy consistency, taste, and color.
“Coffee is very hot and very acidic, so it's very difficult to recreate something that's stable in coffee,” Lane told TechCrunch. “When you pour coffee into your coffee, it has to be completely stable. That's what we did and this was a game changer for us. We also replaced the whitening agent, so it actually All have been replaced and are in stable condition.
Over the past year, Cultivated Biosciences has been working on scaling up. By 2022, it was producing 5 or 10 liters of cream. Currently, he says that amount is 1,500 liters, but Raine says this could be increased to up to 80,000 liters by working with production partners.
Dairy products continue to receive attention from entrepreneurs and investors. In January, Perfect Day raised up to $90 million in a pre-Series E funding round. Like Better Dairy and New Culture, it uses precision fermentation to produce milk proteins. In February, Milk secured $5 million to acquire a plant-based dairy product. There's also Brown Foods, which is developing “Cowles” milk, which is grown in cells in a lab.
Cultivated Biosciences joins them, recently raising an additional $5 million. Navus Ventures led the investment round, with participation from Founderful (previously known as Wingman Ventures), HackCapital, and Planted founder Lukas Böni. This round also introduced new investors including Joyful VC, Mandi Ventures, and Zürcher Kantonalbank.
Lane said the company is currently in talks with food service companies with the goal of bringing the product to market in the U.S. in 2025, pending approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“We are currently in the midst of conducting trials with major key accounts in the industry,” Lane said. “Once we get a sign of approval, we can also start contacting smaller local companies in the US.The fact that we are actually already in contact with important accounts shows that our approach is interesting. Of course, they now want to test the ingredients in several trials. ”
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