Compared with traditional enterprises, the ideas and ideas of food start-ups are quite special. Looking at the global market, innovative companies in the field of food raw materials are emerging one after another. Some rely on technology to lead the way, some rely on raw materials to get out of the circle, and some rely on focusing on absorbing market concerns…
From allulose, which is currently highly anticipated in the global market, to new raw materials in the alternative protein market to plant meat derived from non-animal cells, different companies have different directions and fields. The only thing in common is that they are all “start-up” brands. Product design and low-level logic are worth thinking about!
1 Bonumose, a rare sugar company that Hershey “sees”
Bonumose is a start-up company headquartered in Virginia, USA. It has a unique patented enzyme conversion technology that claims to be able to bring rare sugars (psicose, tagatose) to the mass market. The company recently received a Series B financing led by Hershey and sugar giant ASR Group to support the commercial production of allulose and tagatose in 2022.
At present, companies that produce psicose on a commercial scale use a multi-step process, from corn starch to maltodextrin, to glucose, and then to fructose, and then use enzymes to convert it to psicose. This is a low-yield process that requires multiple separations and purification steps.
Bonumose also starts with starch. The enzymes contained in it can directly convert maltodextrin into allulose. The yield is very high and it is a potential game-changer in the market. Tagatose is also the same, the production process also starts from starch, maltodextrin can directly form tagatose, and the efficiency of large-scale production is better than that of high fructose corn syrup.
2 Debut Biotech, cell-free biological manufacturing, unlock more raw material possibilities
Debut Biotechnology was established in 2019 and is headquartered in California, USA. It is a branch of the University of California UC-Irvine (Irvine), dedicated to advancing cell-free biological manufacturing technology. At present, the company has established a novel cell-free biological manufacturing platform. The platform claims to open up opportunities for the biosynthesis of a wider range of natural ingredients, from natural pigments to preservatives to antioxidants.
Extracting natural ingredients from plants can be expensive, inefficient, and not always very sustainable. This cannot meet all the needs of the food industry, and these disadvantages can be avoided through microbial fermentation production. Debut Biotechnology uses cellular mechanisms (custom-designed enzymes, tiny biocatalysts in nature) and fixes them (essentially fixes them) so that they can continuously convert low-value raw materials such as glucose into high-value components.
It is reported that the company has recently established a cooperative relationship with DIC and DSM. The cooperation with DIC is mainly to develop biosynthesis of colors that are difficult to find or even impossible to obtain in nature.
3 Comet Bio, the creator of a new generation of prebiotic fiber
Arabinoxylan is a fiber component naturally present in the cell walls of many plants. Under normal circumstances, it can be extracted from grain materials such as wheat bran. However, this process often involves high costs, because wheat bran itself is a final food ingredient. After exploration, the Comet Bioresearch team found an effective method to extract arabinoxylan Arrabina from plant leaves and stems and just completed a $22 million Series C financing.
Comet Bio is a company headquartered in Canada dedicated to the development of functional fibers and sweeteners. They mainly upgrade and recycle corn stalks, grain waste used in winemaking, wheat stalks, soybean husks, and other crop residues. The company said that the new method greatly overcomes the shortcomings of traditional extraction, enables arabinoxylan to be more widely used, and it has a prebiotic effect.
In addition, the company’s Sweeterra™ 95DE is high-purity glucose syrup. It can be used as a healthy, functionally equivalent substitute for traditional syrups, providing more sustainable sweetener options, suitable for fermentation, baking, energy drinks, and other applications. In the future, as the market application of Sweeterra™ 95DE expands, artificial meat may become a very important potential market.
4 Terviva, a new generation of oil and vegetable protein
Tervita is a food and agriculture company headquartered in California, USA. It is commercializing low-input, high-yielding Pongamia tree ingredients. The company’s goal is to obtain commercialized “golden-yellow, butter-like” oil by mid-2022, and to obtain highly soluble vegetable protein by 2023. It is reported that Terviva uses natural and proprietary food processing methods to produce and process from the beans of the regenerated Pongamia tree. This is much more sustainable than other oilseed crops currently in use, such as palm and soybeans.
Recently, the company has launched a new cooperation with Danone. The two parties develop new applications of Pongamia oil and plant protein in food and beverages. This collaboration demonstrates the shared vision of Danone and Terviva. Improve soil health, water quality, and biodiversity by supporting regenerative agricultural practices, while improving the environmental performance of the food system.
This oil is semi-solid in the refrigerator, with a nutty taste, and has broad application potential in cooking oils, salad dressings, mayonnaise, and plant-based meat products. Compared with other plant proteins, this plant protein isolate has a neutral taste, a higher PDCAAS score (0.85), and high solubility.
5 BioLumen, natural structured fiber
PepsiCo’s 2021 “Nutrition Greenhouse” incubator program has a total of 10 companies shortlisted, BioLumen is one of them. BioLumen is a nutrition technology company in California, USA. It introduces a natural fiber with a super-expanded structure that can capture fat and sugar in the stomach and prevent their absorption in the small intestine, helping to reduce calorie intake.
This fiber structure with a diameter of 0.1mm will spread out in the stomach, absorb the sugar and fat in the stomach, and increase the feeling of fullness by swelling by itself. The “micro globules” formed by mixing sugar and fat will skip the small intestine and reach the colon where they are released, providing food for the microbial flora and increasing the production of short-chain fatty acids. The rest of the retained nutrients that have not been absorbed are naturally excreted. Normally, fat and sugar are digested and utilized by the body in the small intestine and then reach the large intestine.
Of course, BioLumen cannot successfully absorb all sugar. Here is a percentage, BioLumen can reduce the percentage of sugar absorption. Now, 1g of BioLumen can eliminate 5g of sugar. This means that 6 grams of BioLumen per day can reduce 30 grams of sugar. This is already a quarter of the average American daily sugar intake, and this alone can reduce the average American weight by 15 pounds per year.
6 Nourish Ingredients, add some “materials” for artificial meat
When it comes to meat substitutes, fat is still the final frontier of the recipe. Fat plays a key role in the color, taste, seasoning, and cooking of artificial meat, and is an indispensable “material” for the success of artificial meat. The Australian company Nourish Ingredients is using the power of microorganisms to produce the next generation of non-animal source fats, which it claims can provide a meaty experience better than vegetable oils.
Produce animal-like or animal-like fat without animals. The company mainly uses bacterial culture technology to ferment bacteria in different ways to develop different animal fats. These are expected to be used in meat and dairy products.
This startup is currently in its infancy and has just received $11 million in a round of financing jointly led by Horizons Ventures and Main Sequence Ventures. The company’s co-founder, Dr. James Petrie, stated that the plan is to produce both meat and dairy fats. He worked as a research scientist at the Australian National Institute of Science (CSIRO) and founded the company in early 2020.
7 Mission Barns, focusing on the development and production of animal cultured fat
MissionBarns was founded in Silicon Valley, California, USA in 2018, focusing on the development and production of animal cultured fat. Researchers at Mission Barns use pig, poultry, or cattle cells to grow into a piece of animal fat on a culture medium, and its texture and taste are no different from real animal fat.
Currently, MissionBarns has cooperated with a number of companies producing alternative meat and plant protein. They use its cultured fat in a variety of products, such as bacon, burgers, hot dogs, and grilled sausages. The company said that even a small amount of animal fat can change the function, taste, and taste of plant products.
This year, MissionBarns received $24 million in Series A financing. Investors include Lever VC, GullspangRe Food, Humboldt Fun, GreenMonday Ventures, and Enfini Ventures. It is reported that this financing will be used to expand the scale of its fat cultivation technology and commercialize it.
8 Motif Food Works, changing the food experience with high-quality ingredients
Motif Ingredients is a Boston-based start-up company that develops protein that can be used as a substitute for meat and dairy products. This is a new derivative project announced by the biotechnology unicorn Ginkgo Bioworks in February 2019. Motif’s vision is to fundamentally change people’s understanding of food without destroying the taste or nutritional value of the food itself through the research and development of new food ingredients.
The work of Motif Food Works is mainly concentrated in three areas, artificial meat, dairy active substances, and plant factories. It is reported that the company has raised US$345 million since 2019 and will commercialize its first raw material before the end of this year. The raw material is designed to improve the taste and performance of plant-based meats. The second raw material will focus on improving the texture of plant-based meat and will be commercialized in early 2022.
9 Small food, a small body has great potential as an alternative protein
Small food of Canada is an emerging player in the field of alternative protein. The company is developing a new type of non-GMO complete protein. Its source is a single-celled marine microorganism. This protein is comparable to animal and plant proteins.
The microorganism studied by Small Food is special because it can produce high levels of protein (about 60%), carbohydrates, and long-chain Omega-3 fatty acids. By sequencing more than 20,000 unique microorganisms, a candidate microorganism is produced. The amino acid structure of the protein produced by this microorganism is closer to beef, rather than plant protein.
This is a wild-type strain that does not require genetic modification (unlike some microbial proteins currently produced with the help of synthetic biology) but requires a special process. In terms of industrial scale, these protein concentrates will have price competitiveness compared with vegetable protein concentrates and protein isolates, while providing superior functions and nutrition.
To date, St-Onge has raised more than 20 million Canadian dollars and is currently raising Series B financing to provide funding for commercial-scale production. It is currently in the stage of industrializing this technology, there is much external cooperation that can provide resources and funding, but there is a core team of 12 people, with the 8-month construction phase, this team will continue to grow.
10 The Better Meat Co, a meat substitute of fungal origin
The Better Meat Co, headquartered in California, USA, is a start-up company that provides plant-based meat enhancers. It adopts a B2B operation model to provide food service providers and meat processing companies with plant protein to improve the quality of meat products. Better Meat Co aims to produce plant-based alternative protein. The protein can be mixed with animal meat to make a mixed product.
Recently, the company launched an innovative raw material Rhiza fungal protein, a fungus-based meat substitute, which has good applicability in meat fillings and product forms. The raw material has a PDCAAS score of 0.96, and the meat quality and fiber content are relatively rich. This meat does not require extensive downstream processing or extrusion to be an attractive meat substitute.
11 Next Ferm, a new ingredient derived from yeast
Next Ferm Technologies is an Israeli biotechnology start-up company that has developed yeast-derived fermented astaxanthin. It is reported that compared with algae-derived astaxanthin, the new astaxanthin has a slightly different microstructure, so it can be absorbed quickly and effectively and has high bioavailability. Currently, the company is developing a vegetarian protein ingredient ProteVin from microbial sources.
ProteVin is a vegetarian, non-GMO, yeast protein that is currently undergoing pilot-scale testing in factories in the United States. Independent laboratories, internal testers, and potential customers analyzed the ProteVin samples produced at the experimental scale and found that their quality matched the laboratory-scale products, indicating that it can be used as a substitute for animal-derived protein.
ProteVin is a pure vegetarian, with animal-like nutritional value and a neutral flavor. It can be used in various product formulations, such as milk, dairy substitutes, meat substitutes, infant nutrition, adult nutrition, and sports nutrition. Currently, the company is preparing for the commercial launch of ProteVin in 2022.
12 MicroSalt, a patented technology that provides low-sodium natural salt
Excessive salt intake has become a more obvious health hazard in the world. Salt is the main sodium component used in processed foods and contributes the most to the sodium intake in the United States. Too much sodium can raise blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. As many as 70% of Americans’ average salt intake comes from processed foods and restaurant foods, rather than salt added to the table.
Micro Salt’s patented technology can increase the surface area of the tongue by reducing the size of conventional salt particles, achieving the same salty taste as traditional salt, but with only half the sodium content. Due to the size of the nanoparticles, it dissolves almost instantly, providing a higher saltiness with less salt. The sodium content per unit volume of Micro Salt is lower than the equivalent unit volume of traditional sodium chloride.
Micro Salt has tiny particles that provide a disproportionately salty taste through the largest surface area, which is more suitable for dry surface product applications such as potato chips, corn flakes, nuts, biscuits, popcorn and many other snacks.
13 Avant Meats, Chinese fish cell culturer
Avant Meats was founded in Hong Kong, China at the end of 2018. It is an innovative cell meat technology company based on fish cell cultivation and combining brand building and intellectual property rights. Avant Meats aims to become the world’s leading cell culture technology company, with a focus on fish and seafood products tailored to Chinese and Asian food culture.
In the future, if breakthroughs are made in the price and technical bottlenecks of cellular meat, it will be unstoppable to promote consumers’ transition from real meat to more environmentally friendly and healthy cellular meat on a large scale. Avant Meats hopes to use biotechnology to solve problems such as the surge in demand for seafood, the long-term consumption of marine ecology and the reduction in production, the safety and pollution of seafood products, and provide consumers with non-GMO, pollution-free, traceable, and can be controlled and beneficial to health as required Fish products with ingredient ratios.
