Sustainable protein innovation priorities

As many startups begin to scale up their production, significant investment is needed to finance high capital expenditures.

While venture capital has been instrumental in accelerating the sector to date, the venture capital model is not suited to large infrastructure projects, such as building processing or manufacturing plants. Furthermore, continued venture capital investment dilutes startups.

The industry therefore needs more debt financing to fund the next stage of growth. The creation of infrastructure loan and leasing funds will help supply to keep up with demand and unlock additional economies of scale.

Many investors are eager to get involved with the sustainable protein space but may be hindered by information gaps. Investors beyond those who are intimately familiar with cultivated meat and fermentation approaches may find it time-consuming to learn where to invest due to the dense competitive landscape, limited public information about the technological state of the art, and deep scientific knowledge required to conduct due diligence on startups.

Investors specialising in sustainable proteins should educate the broader investment community through coalitions, syndicated deals, and co-investments with industry-agnostic investors, and spearhead efforts to facilitate later-stage funding like debt and inventory financing.

For model species like humans and mice, a vast array of academic and commercial research tools have been developed that enable researchers to easily manipulate, characterise and screen cells, and to probe their behaviour.

For meat and seafood-relevant species, very few of these tools – such as genetic constructs, antibodies, and sequencing probes – have been developed, creating a huge barrier to entry for researchers wishing to work with cells of these species.

Coordinated efforts to develop standardised, comprehensive research toolkits of these species would exponentially accelerate cultivated meat and seafood research.

The plant-based, cultivated meat and fermentation industries have a significant need for workers and innovators with specialised knowledge spanning multiple traditional disciplines. However, since few universities offer sustainable protein degrees or dedicated subject matter, most relevant knowledge has to be learned on the job.

The industry needs educational programming that can cover the depth and complexity of knowledge, experience and skills required within the context of traditional academic institutions as well as post-graduate professional development and training opportunities.

These programmes could also expand the R&D talent pipeline from scientific communities – cell biology, stem cell biology, biopolymers, materials science, 3D bioprinting – as well as biotech, biopharma, and established agrifood and meat companies.

Training and reskilling people to work in sustainable proteins will streamline the labour transition needed to scale the industry. The need for training and education will also support the creation of new businesses and institutes, facilitating market competition and scientific collaboration that will help generate industry-advancing products, services, and ideas.

Academic-industry collaborations are essential for advancing sustainable proteins because they help build robust talent pipelines, create clear commercialisation pathways for academic research, and drive alignment on priority research questions, challenges and potential solutions.

However, challenges navigating ownership of the intellectual property generated through such partnerships has led to a lack of collaboration. To encourage greater collaboration, the sector needs to build better, standardised frameworks and platforms for coordinating connection and partnership across academic and industry stakeholders.

Demand for raw materials, ingredients and inputs is outpacing supply, even for the most widely available plant-based proteins like soy and wheat. However, ingredient suppliers are hesitant to increase supply as it is difficult to predict what demand will look like in the short- and long-term.

Publicly available demand forecasts for novel and existing raw materials, ingredients and inputs would address these key knowledge gaps. These forecasts would be particularly valuable if segmented by product type, region, and consumer demographics. Scenario analyses, influence diagrams, and Monte Carlo calculations would enable more effective second- and nth-order estimates about what will be required from upstream suppliers in the value chain. They would also inform technical, regulatory and consumer demand milestones.

Ingredients from different suppliers exhibit a range of sensory and functional characteristics, leading to undesired variability in end product formulation. Plant-based meat manufacturers would benefit from raw materials processors and farmers working in concert to develop high-quality, homogenous ingredients.

Better analytical tools for predicting plant-based ingredient performance could also improve manufacturing efficiency and create more transparent ingredient markets. Tools are needed to predict how ingredients will perform in final product applications like plant-based meat and dairy and under various processing methods. Companies could commercialise these tools themselves (in the form of assay kits or analytical equipment) or provide ingredient characterisation as a service.

There is a need for greater exploration of processing innovations, including cheaper methods of protein extraction that can be done efficiently at smaller scales. Ingredient companies today are looking into more efficient deoiling methods, enhancing protein concentrate offerings, and more.

Beyond traditional chemical or mechanical processing methods, ingredients companies and academics should further explore enzymatic and biological processing for sustainable protein purposes.

There is a significant opportunity to improve, optimise and innovate on current processing techniques for plant-based, cultivated and fermentation products.

Specifically for plant-based, there is an opportunity for equipment companies and researchers to optimise extrusion for plant-based production, as well as to look into novel methods for texturising and structuring plant-based proteins, such asshear cell, 3D printing, and electrospinning. These innovations will help to improve the taste and texture of end products.

Currently, there is not enough sustainable protein manufacturing capacity, from pilot to demonstration to full-scale, to meet demand.

To meet market expectations for plant-based, cultivated and fermentation products, vast amounts of additional infrastructure will need to be built and existing infrastructure, such as from meat or biopharma, may have to be repurposed.

The success of the sustainable protein industry rests upon the ability to create tasty, craveable products with identical or superior flavours and textures to conventionally produced meat, egg and dairy products.

While we’ve seen significant improvements, few sustainable protein products have achieved this to date.A recent study across the US and Europeshowed that only 30% of respondents agreed that plant-based meat tasted as good or better than animal-based meat.

As taste is critical to consumer’s trial and acceptance of these products, companies must invest in additional R&D to perfect these products, and governments must fund open-access R&D.

Demonstrating nutrition equivalence or advantage over animal counterparts will help win over European consumers. European consumers have increasingly high standards for the nutrition and clean label of these products – something companies must keep in mind as they perfect the taste and texture of plant-based and cultivated meat.

There are many approaches these companies can take, such as prioritising a clean label, sourcing local and non-GMO ingredients, and matching or exceeding the nutritional properties of conventionally produced animal products.

It will be incumbent upon companies to demonstrate the environmental benefits of cultivated meat.

Conducting rigorous life cycle assessments will be critical. These analyses should note the potential for increased efficiencies across all stages of the plant, fermentation, and cellular agriculture life cycles, as well as the opportunities for increased efficiency that come with scaling up production.

It will be crucial to continue these sustainability studies as the industry reaches commercial scale to capture the full effect of this shift.

Distribution can often be a complex space for young brands to navigate, with a lack of publicly available knowledge about how to approach distribution strategy.

Having more informational resources and matching mechanisms to connect plant-based and cultivated meat companies with the brokers, consultants, distributors, import/export service providers, and other intermediaries would help companies to bring products to market more quickly and profitably, and increase consumer accessibility.