The vegan food market was pegged as a $27 billion industry last year, a figure expected to more than double within a decade. This has not gone unnoticed by major food and beverage giants such as Nestlé, which launched a plant-based milk line under the Wunda brand last year, while rival Unilever is doubling down on its vegan offerings.
But any company that wants to develop successful plant-based food options faces challenges when trying to replicate some of the traditional animal-based products. It’s not easy to recreate the “cream” without using real cream, so dairy products, especially solutions like coconut oil or palm oil, are not all sustainable from an environmental perspective.
This is something Swiss startup Cultivated Biosciences plans to address by using a GMO-free yeast fermentation process to create something similar to high-fat cream.
Mouthfeel
Founded in 2021 by Thomas Turner and Dimitri Zog from Zurich, Cultivated Biosciences is one of countless companies working in the sustainable food space, working to reduce human dependence on everything from chicken and seafood to sausages. Dairy products are garnering a lot of attention from entrepreneurs and investors around the world, with the likes of Brown Foods recently raising funds to produce cell-derived “cowless” milk in the lab, using precision fermentation methods to deliver better milk and a new culture. The essential milk proteins are missing from other dairy-free options.
Cultivated Biosciences, on the other hand, is tackling the problem from a slightly different angle—focusing precisely on “texture” to help vegan food manufacturers create items that feel as close to real McCoy as possible.
CEO Thomas Turner told TechCrunch: “We’re working on the fat and surrounding microstructural elements that give milk its amazing mouthfeel. We’ve developed a fat-rich ingredient that has the mouthfeel and color that you’d imagine as a 20% fat cream that’s indistinguishable from dairy.”
How the company creates this, Turner said, is that they use a one-step process, starting with oleaginous yeast, which is then fermented according to the needs of their customers and the specific products they are producing, such as vegan dairy brands. – Be it yogurt, cheese, ice cream or anything else.
“We can concentrate, color or dry the cream, similar to dairy products,” Turner added.
Cultivated Biosciences today raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to help it take the next steps to commercialize the product, Turner said. He plans to launch his first products after a while, with his first customers next year. The company will have to go through regulatory approval processes in its target markets, including the EU and GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) in the US.
“We will begin a pilot launch in the US in 2024, expand in Europe in 2025 and continuously expand the business as we ramp up production,” Turner said.
Cultivated Biosciences’ pre-seed round is led by Wingman Ventures of Switzerland, along with Big Idea Ventures, Blue Horizon, Proveg International, among other backers.
