Following the close of $120 million in Series B funding, Israeli foodtech startup Remilk, which produces animal-free dairy-identical milk proteins through precision fermentation, will be building a full-scale precision fermentation facility in Kalundborg, Denmark, the company announced Tuesday.

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The facility is planned to extend over 750,000 square feet of newly acquired land within The Symbiosis project, a pioneering sustainable industrial ecosystem, in Kalundborg.

Kalundborg's Symbiosis project is an industrial ecosystem in which byproducts of one company become resources for another. At present, Symbiosis is a collaborative effort involving more than a dozen visionary public and private companies including industry giants such as Novozymes, Novo Nordisk and Chr. Hansen.

At the new facility, Remilk plans to produce non-animal dairy protein for use in products like cheese, yogurt, and ice cream, in volumes equivalent to that produced by 50,000 cows each year.

"Remilk is committed to reinventing our dairy industry in a kind, sustainable way. Eliminating the need for animals in our food system is the only way to supply our world's growing demand without destroying it in the process," said Remilk founder and CEO Aviv Wolff.

"We intend to massively scale up our production capabilities to make nutritious, delicious, and affordable dairy that will send cows into early retirement," he added.

According to Wolff, Remilk isn't just "dreaming big, we're acting upon our promise to dramatically reduce the food industry's devastating impact on our planet. Ending animals' historic role as providers of food for humankind is one of the most powerful measures we can take to reduce our impact on this planet."

The selection of this location was made possible through a partnership with the city of Kalundborg, Invest in Denmark (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark), the Danish Embassy in Israel, and the Israeli Embassy in Denmark.

Kalundborg Mayor Martin Damm said, "The Municipality of Kalundborg looks forward to welcoming the international company Remilk. The company's profile fits perfectly into our sustainability profile and with the Biotech City's other participants."

"When Remilk's plant for production of non-animal dairy products is completed, it will also be the world's largest precision fermentation facility. I see Remilk's choice of Kalundborg Municipality as a buy-in to our commitment to sustainability, high technology and education and our ability to enter a constructive dialogue with our stakeholders," Damm said.

"I am very happy to welcome Remilk to Denmark. This investment is a recognition of Denmark's position as a global leader in sustainable food production and innovation," said Anne Hougaard Jensen, director of Invest in Denmark at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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Cultivated meat foodtech venture SuperMeat announced on Tuesday the results of the first-ever blind tasting of cultivated chicken compared to conventionally-produced chicken. The verdict? The two were indistinguishable.

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The testing took place at The Chicken, SuperMeat's Tel Aviv restaurant, which is the first dining venue to serve cultivated meat meals.

A panel of judges, including Michal Ansky from "MasterChef," were each given portions of ground chicken, one based on cultured chicken and one on chicken raised by traditional methods.

The meat was not treated or seasoned, and the judges found the samples to similar to be able to pick which was the cultured product.

Ansky expressed surprise when she learned which portion was cultivated chicken.

"I'm extremely happy I was wrong, for one of the first times in my life. This kind of breakthrough has been a long time coming. As someone who loves chicken and incorporates it into family meals regularly, it's inspiring to see a more sustainable future can be achieved via cultivated meat," she said.

SuperMeat's belief in the importance of transparency to the food industry prompted the company to open its pilot plan to the world. Visitors can watch the entire cultured chicken production process from start to finish. The plant includes an open kitchen that serves its products.

"Now that we've shown that cultivated meat and traditional meat can be indistinguishable, the potential impact on how companies develop and produce meat products today, and consequently potential impact on our planet, is monumental," said SuperMeat CEO Ido Savir.

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Foodtech start-up Plantish is giving consumers a first look at its flagship product, a 100% plant-based whole-cut salmon fillet, which the company says mimics cooked salmon in texture, taste, appearance, and structure.

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Co-founder and CEO Ofek Ron says that the Plantish team keeps its mission close to its heart – "to save the oceans and eliminate the need to consume marine animals by providing more sustainable, more nutritious, and more delicious fish options."

According to market research firm IMARC Group, the seafood market today is worth $586 billion, and salmon accounts for $50 billion of that. Approximately 80% of fish is consumed whole or in fillet form. But the alternative seafood sector offers mainly minced fish options because of the complexities of producing whole "cuts."

The technical difficulties come not only in creating a facsimile of the taste, texture, and mouthfeel of fish from the ocean, but also its structure and scalability. Producers need to find the right plant proteins to achieve fibrous stands that will stand in for fish flesh.

The first product Plantish is launching is Plantish Salmon, which the company describes as a fully structured, boneless plant-based salmon fillet. The startup says Plantish Salmon has the same nutritional value as conventional salmon, and is high in protein, Omega-3s, Omega-6s, and B vitamins. And as an added bonus, unlike fish from the ocean or aquaculture, their product is reportedly free of mercury, antibiotics, hormones, microplastics, and toxins.

"Our vision is to be the world's leading seafood brand," says Ron, "all without hurting a single fish."

Plantish's current prototype can be cooked in all the ways that conventional salmon is prepared. The company plans to introduce its salmon fillets at select pop-up locations by the end of 2022, and officially roll it out in 2024.

Plantish joined the burgeoning alternative protein start-up scene in early 2021 and shortly thereafter after raised a pre-seed round of $2 million from TechAviv Founder Partners, and angel investors that include Michelin-starred chef José Andrés and Nuseir Yassin of the Nas Daily vlog.

The founders of Plantish are a mix of serial entrepreneurs, bioengineering and chemistry PhDs, and foodtech executives.

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Israeli food-tech startup Remilk, which produces dairy-identical milk proteins through a fermentation process, has raised $120 million in a Series B round led by Hanaco Ventures, the company announced Thursday.

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The funding will allow Remilk to immediately scale production of its milk protein for commercial use by manufacturers in traditionally dairy-based products that include cheeses, yogurt and ice cream.

According to Remilk, its animal-free milk is indistinguishable in taste and function from cow milk proteins, but free of lactose, cholesterol, and growth hormones. The patented process also impacts the environment significantly less than the traditional dairy industry, using an estimated 1% of the land, 4% of the GHG emissions, and 5% of the water required to produce comparable products by milking cows.

"It is essential for the future of our planet that we liberate the food chain from dependency on animals. We do so by crafting real dairy that tastes and feels the same, minus the cow," says Aviv Wolff, CEO and co-founder of Remilk.

"Our mission is bold, and support from these experienced and trusted investors demonstrates the power of Remilk to meet the moment. This funding propels us on our journey to transform the dairy category into one that delivers delicious, nutritious products without harm to people, planet, or animals. Already, we are engaging with dozens of companies, including some of world's most popular brands, to recreate the future of dairy together," Wolff says.

The company plans to have products featuring Remilk in the marketplace later this year.

The oversubscribed Series B round included investments from Precision Capital, Rage Capital, CPT Capital, Intercap, OurCrowd, Aliya Capital, Chartered Group, Indorama Ventures, Tal Ventures, Fresh Fund, Idan and Gil Ofer, Izaki Ventures, and Paradigm Shift Fund.

"Remilk is on a mission to transform the alternative protein industry by introducing the next generation of dairy. Not only are Remilk products cleaner and significantly more sustainable when compared to traditional dairy, but they are indistinguishable in taste, feel, and texture," says Hanaco Ventures founding partner Pasha Romanovski.

"Remilk also employs production methods that are radically more sustainable than traditional production methods today. We have a strong conviction in the founders' vision and are thrilled to support the talented team on their journey."

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Israeli foodtech startup SavorEat on Tuesday launched a plant-based burger system personalized to each customer, one of the first companies to use 3D printing technology to cook food.

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Typically, vegan burgers from companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are frozen and later cooked on a grill.

SavorEat's technology, however, are made on site by a self-contained 3D printer with three cartridges containing oils and other ingredients. Customers can choose how much fat and protein they want in each burger, which takes about six minutes to cook.

"It's a mix of innovation of meat alternative and digital manufacturing where we can also cook the product," Racheli Vizman, SavorEat's chief executive, told Reuters.

She said the firm's burgers are made with a combination of potato and chickpea and pea protein.

Demand for meat alternatives by health and environmentally conscious consumers has jumped in recent years, while alternative protein startups raised more than $3 billion in 2020.

Another Israeli company, Redefine Meat, last month started to deploy meatless whole cuts in European restaurants.

SavorEat, funded mainly by Israeli institutions and whose Tel Aviv-listed shares rose 11% on Tuesday, said its products would initially be served at a local burger chain.

The company is also collaborating with food service firm Yarzin Sela that supplies Israeli high-tech companies and forged a deal with Sodexo to serve its vegan burgers to US universities.

"There is a growing segment of people called 'flexiterian' – people who are actively trying to look for meat alternatives to reduce their meat consumption," Vizman said, citing about one-third of the US population.

Oded Shoseyov, chairman and chief scientist of SavorEat, said the firm is also working on a plant-based version of a pork breakfast sausage for the US market.

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Students from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology's Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering have won top prizes in a European food innovation competition designed to develop healthy and sustainable food for everyone.

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The EU-supported Food Solutions Project is part of EIT FOOD – a program that fosters innovation to create healthy and sustainable food for all. The premise of the competition was to take real-world nutritional and sustainability challenges faced by the food industry and come up with solutions that can potentially transform the food system and promote sustainability and health.

Experts and mentors from top European universities supervised the student's progress, together with leading companies Nestle, Danone-Nutricia, Döhler, IMDEA and Puratos.  Two Technion teams won first place prizes, and another came in third.

This year, the Technion's participating teams chose to tackle two challenges: GrOAT: creating an innovative, healthy, and sustainable product using an oat-based ingredient (a challenge presented by the Finnish company Myllyn Paras, which invests considerable resources in "plant-based innovation"); and FoodFE: (Food for the Elderly) – to design novel food products for the elderly that address the issue of loss of taste, palatability, and efficiency of nutrient uptake.

Once the teams had formed, they spent some six months developing their products. The process involved attempts to assess product manufacturing at the Technion's food pilot plant and support from senior industry representatives. The students also consulted with chefs at Tel Aviv culinary school Bishulim, who helped refine and resolve some of the culinary aspects of the projects.

The Bioat Group – graduate students Maayan Ben-David, Liora Bernstein, Carolina Lejterer, and Gil Raphael – won a first place prize for their vegan "labaneh" cheese spread, based on a fermented oat ingredient. The team's product also came in first in the crowd favorite category.

Judges praised their vegan labaneh as delicious, and employees from a company with origins in the Middle East said that the taste was very close to that of dairy-based labaneh.

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The CRACKEAT Group – Dor Abu Hazira, Shlomit Hakim, Hadar Kochavi, Victoria Skortov, and Linor Rochlin – won first place for a soy-based, creamy treat for the elderly with a crisp cookie on top. The product was praised by the judges for its unique presentation and taste. The final product provides a complex experience of different textures, while also being more environmentally friendly than current packaging solutions. It is high in protein and fiber, sugar-free, and low in saturated fat.

Coming in third place in the Food Products Challenge for the Elderly was another group from the faculty – Shahar Hefner, Nova Neumann, Christine Oviad, and Dana Raz. The four developed Lite Delight, a unique nutritional snack based solely on natural ingredients and tailored to the needs and desires of the senior population. The product offers something chewy, but not too chewy, that is portable and tasty. The individual brownie-like cake bar was praised for its soft, fluffy texture, combined with a sweet taste and no added sugar.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the groups did not fly to Europe to present their products but sent them by courier to the judges so that they could taste them first-hand. The judges praised Bioat, CRACKEAT, and Lite Delight for their quality and congratulated the teams on their professionalism and attention to detail in their packaging and branding.

"This win wraps up a whole year of hard work," said faculty members and mentors Dr. Maya Davidovich-Pinhas, Professor Uri Lesmes, and Professor Avi Shpigelman.

"This achievement demonstrates the excellence of students in this faculty, not only in the engineering and technological aspects, but also creatively and in their ability to deal with all aspects of the process from market research, creating a business feasibility study, addressing regulatory and marketing issues, conducting shelf-life analysis, planning the commercial manufacturing process, and of course presenting their product to experts," they said.

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A startup based in Tel Hai in northern Israel might have accidentally struck gold in the search for ingredients that will make plant-based meat alternatives "bloody."

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Yemoja, Ltd., which focuses on developing marine ingredients for the nutraceutical and cosmetics B2B sectors, has discovered that red microalgae can mimic the "bloody" juiciness of medium-rare plant-based burgers and steaks.

"While working on a new formulation for cosmetic applications, we serendipitously discovered that this specific composition yields a substance that resembles blood in appearance and texture," notes Dr. Amikam Bar-Gil, co-founder and CTO of Yemoja.

"Encouraged by the first test results, we decided to push the boundaries further and take it to the next level, trying it out in test products. The results were an immediate proof of concept," Bar-Gil says.

The company's formulation, branded Ounje – meaning "food" in the Yoruba language – is derived from the Porphyridium strain of algae, which it grows indoors. Yemoja says that the algae-based ingredient could potentially serve as a 100% plant-based substitute for heme for the alternative meat industry.

Yemoja reports that its patented microalgal heme substitute not only provides the initial red pigment to raw plant-based meats, it also browns up nicely when put to the sizzle. It also congeals like real meat juices, "expressing a viscosity similar to gelatin when cooked," the company says, citing an "appealing crunchiness and appetizing meat aroma."

Beyond the visual and textural meat-like appeal that the algae provides, microalgae is a highly sustainable crop, boasting a 20%-30% protein load and harbors the complete essential amino acids profile. Algae are also a valuable source of essential fatty acids, polyphenols as well as minerals and vitamins, and gaining esteem as a powerful superfood.

"The demand for clean, naturally sourced alternative proteins that can dually exert a less harmful impact on the environment is an internationally sought venture," adds Erez Ashkenazi, co-founder and CEO of Yemoja. "Our advanced patented cultivation system offers a high-value yet cost-effective solution that can be easily scaled up to the unique needs of the various alt protein/meat producers to help bolster this rapidly growing category."

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Foodtech startup MeaTech 3D has successfully bioprinted a 3.67 oz (104-gram) cultivated steak, primarily composed of cultivated real fat and muscle cells, the Ness Ziona-based company announced Tuesday.

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MeaTech believes this to be the largest cultured steak produced to date.

"Today's breakthrough is the culmination of over one year's efforts in our cellular biology and high-throughput tissue engineering processes, as well as our precision bioprinting technology," said MeaTech CEO and CTO Sharon Fima.

"By bioprinting a 3.67 oz steak comprised of living tissue, we believe we have both validated our core technologies and placed ourselves at the forefront of the race to develop high-end, real cell-based cultivated premium meat products," Fima said.

The cells used to make the steak were produced using a proprietary process that isolates bovine stem cells from tissue samples and multiplies. Upon reaching sufficient cellular mass, stem cells were formulated into bio-inks compatible with MeaTech's proprietary 3D bio-printer. The bio-inks were printed from a digital design file of a steak structure. The printed product was placed in an incubator to mature, where the printed stem cells were differentiated into fat and muscle cells that develop into fat and muscle tissue, respectively, to form the MeaTech steak.

MeaTech's goal is to develop a true replacement for conventional steak that maximizes cell-based content rather than non-meat ingredients. The cultivated does not contain any soy or pea protein, substitutes typically used in plant-based meat alternatives.

The company intends to continue improving upon its bioprinting and cultivation technologies to produce cultivated meat that better mirrors the key characteristics of farm-raised, premium steak.

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VeganNation, an Israeli startup, is slated to launch its new mobile app this week with the goal to create a vegan global community.

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Isaac Thomas, founder and chairman of VeganNation, told i24NEWS that he started with a mission "to build a technological platform connecting businesses and consumers around the world and to make plant-based [products] and sustainability accessible and affordable."

The platform is designed to unite the global vegan community into a shared economy with a designated marketplace and payment solution, as well as the company's own community-based digital currency "GreenCoin."

Lata Kennedy, the owner of the herbal medicine store Flower Power Herbs & Roots in New York, spoke to i24NEWS about the gratitude she feels for the expanding vegan community.

"I'm so gratified over the course of the last 28 years to see so many people becoming vegans," Kennedy said.

"We need this collective to show the market what value we have as plant-based consumers," Kennedy said.

While visiting restaurants in New York that participate in the VeganNation program, Thomas discussed his vision for the new app with i24NEWS.

"[The app] is a business directory where we will be able to find every plant-based and sustainable business around us, from food to fashion, health to wellness… and pay the business through our digital wallet GreenPay."

VeganNation's digital wallet, GreenPay, facilitates in-app purchases as well as a loyalty rewards program, in an effort to make the startup's currency, GreenCoin, the official alternative currency instrument for the global plant-based community.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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Israel is rapidly positioning itself at the vanguard of alternative meat and dairy development, with numerous startups working on either eliminating the animal element from the food we consume or finding a way to skirt slaughter and/or dairy farming through cultured meat and dairy products.

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One of the newer players on the scene is Imagindairy Ltd, a foodtech startup that creates milk proteins it says is identical to those in cow's milk.

Imagindairy's proprietary technology allows manufacturers to offer cow-free, sustainable milk and dairy products.

The technology in use at Imagindairy is based on 15 years of research led by company co-founder and CSO Professor Tamir Tuller of Tel Aviv University. It feeds microorganisms instead of cows, and the select microorganisms the company employs are up to 20 times more efficient than cows at converting feed into food, resulting in highly functional milk proteins that boast the same texture, flavor, and nutritional value as milk from cows.

"We are excited to share this news with our partners and colleagues," Imagindairy co-founder and CEO Dr. Eyal Afergan explains.

"The market is eager to develop new dairy analogs based on our animal-free proteins. Once we reach commercialization, more consumers will be able to enjoy eating animal-free dairy products. It's hard for people to make big changes, especially when it comes to the foods they enjoy, but when there's an alternative with the same flavor and experience that is more aligned to their values, it becomes easy," Afergan adds.

Earlier this month, Imagindairy completed a $13 million seed round led by MoreVC, a leading seed stage investor in Israel that manags $275 million across three funds. Other participants included Strauss Group, Entrée Capital, S2G Ventures; Collaborative Fund, New Climate Ventures, Green Circle Foodtech Ventures; Emerald Technology Ventures and Pierre Besnainou.

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The company will invest the funds raised in expanding its facilities, increasing its professional team, and boosting research and development capacity to meet the demands of its partners.

Imagindairy is currently collaborating with leading dairy companies, offering a complete range of dairy-free proteins.

Strauss Group CTO Eyal Shimoni said, "Imagindairy ticks all the right boxes. This is innovative technology that can help solve world hunger in our growing population; it's a solution that is green and animal-free. We at Strauss group, one of the leading dairy companies in Israel, identified the potential in this start-up in the early stages and have confidence in its managers to help lead the alt-protein revolution toward a better, more sustainable future."

"Imagindairy's innovative technology allows dairy companies to develop new products or reformulate existing products, without involving animals and with a dramatic reduction in carbon-footprint," says Glen Schwaber, a partner at MoreVC.

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