The need for new technologies to accelerate innovation in the food industry has never been greater, as the world battles the interrelated crises of climate change, food insecurity and the coronavirus pandemic. The upcoming Future Food-Tech Summit taking place on December 2-3 will see some of the startups and entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of the challenge present their ideas and solutions, from upcycled food waste ingredients to sustainable food packaging. We take a look at 8 of the most promising companies and the technologies they are developing below.
1. Orbillion Bio
Founding date: 2019
Founder: Patricia Bubner
Headquarters: Berkeley, California, U.S.
Orbillion Bio is a startup building an advanced bioplatform for functional testing of cell lines for premium cultivated meat. On a mission to accelerate the broad availability of a variety of nutritious cultivated meat products, the startup’s first product will be bison jerky that is low-fat, low-cholesterol and high-protein. Orbillion Bio is part of Hong Kong-based accelerator Brinc’s Spring 2020 cohort and Big Idea Ventures’ latest New York cohort.
2. Paragon Pure
Founding date: 2019
Founders: Christopher Gregson & Matthew Sillick
Headquarters: Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
Paragon Pure is focused on creating natural, functional ingredients for clean label products without any synthetic additives. Working with natural ingredients and using its technology that guides traditional grain sprouting processes towards precise functional properties, the company offers a line of high-performance specialty flours that can replace conventional additives that keeps products fresh and flavourful.
3. Tait Labs
Founding date: 2011
Founder: Dr. Andrew Tait
Headquarters: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Tait Laboratories is a natural product company committed to modernising traditional natural medicines using scientific research and clean extraction technology, producing novel sustainable food and pharmaceutical ingredients using upcycled agri-food waste, such as mandarin orange peels. The company has so far tapped into the 4 million tons of mandarin orange peels that are wasted annually to create two products, a prebiotic and a digestive relief supplement.
4. Bevo
Founding date: 2019
Founders: Tilen Travnik, Maj Hrovat & Luka Sinček
Headquarters: Kamnik, Slovenia
Bevo is an R&D food tech developing a process to transform any plant-based protein powder into a muscle-like fibrous structure that can then be shaped into delicious steaks, and provides novel plant-based product manufacturing technologies to other companies. Their first product was a plant-based burger called Altburger, which is available in Interspar stores in Slovenia. Currently, Bevo can produce beef, pork and chicken-like steaks with a lab-scale capacity.
5. Those Vegan Cowboys
Founding date: 2020
Founders: Jaap Korteweg & Niko Koffeman
Headquarters: Ghent, Belgium
Those Vegan Cowboys was started by the founding fathers of The Vegetarian Butcher. The Ghent-based startup, who recently launched a bounty hunt for the perfect fungal strain, is on a mission to speed up the development of fermentation-based dairy alternatives. Using fermentation technology, the company hopes to create animal-free dairy products that are molecularly identical to conventional dairy, but requires no cows, no-cruelty and is more environmentally-friendly.
6. The Live Green Co
Founding date: 2018
Founders: Priyanka Srinivas & Sasikanth Chemalamudi
Headquarters: Santiago, Chile
The Live Green Co is on a mission to disrupt the way the world consumes food with its line of sustainable and healthy plant-based products superfood ingredients such as mung beans, moringa and tulsi. They hope to use their 100% natural plant ingredients, which undergo minimal processing thanks to their machine learning smart tech, to replace animals and highly-processed additives in our daily foods. In addition to being vegan, their products are gluten-free, soya-free and are packaged using zero plastic.
7. Protera
Founding date: 2018
Founders: Leonardo Álvarez & Francia Navarrete
Headquarters: Paris, France & Santiago, Chile
Protera is a biotech startup leveraging artificial intelligence algorithms and deep learning technology to craft functional proteins. Their process, called Natural Intelligence, is the technology behind their line of clean-label texturising and food-preserving proteins that have different properties, ranging from shelf stable and anti-fungal ingredients to high-melting plant-based point oils.
8. StenCo
Founding date: 2019
Founders: John Brown & Alexander N. Gerogiannis
Headquarters: Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.
StenCo has created a compostable oxygen barrier technology, providing a solution to extending shelf-life of products without the need for single-use packaging. The company uses solid polymer science to create cost-efficient nature-based materials, and their food contact safe product can keep food fresh better than most plastics. In addition, the material is microwavable, grease resistant and water resistant.
Lead image courtesy of The Live Green Co.