Cultivated Biosciences wants plant-based dairy products to look more like the real McCoy

Last year, the vegan food market was considered a $27 billion industry, a figure that is expected to more than double within a decade. This has not gone unnoticed by major incumbent food and drink players such as Nestlé, which last year launched a range of plant-based dairy products under the Wunda brand, while rival Unilever has doubled its vegan offerings.

But any company looking to develop successful plant-based food alternatives often faces challenges when trying to replicate certain products traditionally made from animal-based ingredients. Dairy products, in particular, have their problems, as recreating the "creaminess" without using real cream is not easy - and existing dairy-free solutions such as coconut oil or palm oil are not so sustainable from an environmental point of view.

That's something Swiss startup Cultivated Biosciences is trying to solve by creating something akin to a high-fat cream using a non-GMO yeast fermentation process.< /p>

Founded in Zurich in 2021 by Tomas Turner and Dimitri Zogg, Cultivated Biosciences is one of countless companies in a sustainable food space working to reduce humans' dependence on animals for sustenance, ranging from chicken and seafood to sausages. Dairy products are also attracting the attention of entrepreneurs and investors around the world, with companies like Brown Foods recently raising funds to develop cell culture "cow-free" milk in a lab, while Better Dairy and New Culture use precision fermentation techniques to help provide the necessary milk proteins that are lacking in other dairy-free alternatives.

Cultivated Biosciences, on the other hand, approaches the problem from a slightly different angle: it focuses squarely on "texture" to help vegan food producers create products that "feel" closer to the real McCoy. .

"We're working on the fat and surrounding microstructure that give dairy products their incredible mouthfeel," CEO Tomas Turner told TechCrunch. "We've developed a high-fat ingredient that you can imagine as a 20% fat cream, with a mouthfeel and color indistinguishable from dairy products."

As to how the company creates this, Turner said it uses a one-step process that starts with oleaginous (oily) yeast, which it then ferments based on the needs of its customers vegan dairy brands and the specific products they make, whether it's yogurt, cheese, ice cream, or anything else.

"We can concentrate, dilute or dry the cream, very similar to how you process dairy products," Turner added.

To help take the product to the next stages of commercialization, Cultivated Biosciences today announced that it has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding, the money Turner said will be used to optimize its production process, perform additional R&D and enter product development trials with its first customers next year, and it plans to launch its first products shortly thereafter. The company will also need to go through regulatory approval processes in its target markets, including Novel Food in the EU and GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) in the US.

"We will begin doing launch testing in 2024 in the United States, expand into Europe in 2025, and continually expand commercialization as we ramp up production," Turner said.

The Cultivated Biosciences pre-seed round was led by Swiss-based Wingman Ventures, with participation from Big Idea Ventures, Blue Horizon, Proveg I...