Harnessing the immense potential of precision fermentation to produce animal fats for the next generation of meat and dairy alternatives

Introduction

Melt&Marble (M&M) is a Sweden-based company that specializes in developing exceptional fats for plant-based foods. The origins of our company trace back to Jens Nielsen's Systems and Synthetic Biology group at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Current Landscape

Currently, more than 60% of dietary proteins are supplied by animals, whose farming takes up ~77% of all agricultural land despite supplying only 17% of the world’s calories. Dependence on animal proteins leads to:

• Ecosystem destruction
• Biodiversity loss
• More than 15% of GHG emissions

Though there are alternate meat and dairy options available, the plant-based oils and fats used in plant-based meat and dairy analogues simply cannot compete with the functionality and flavour of animal fats.

Our Innovation

We have created, for the first time, a scalable, precision-fermentation-based proprietary technology platform using engineered yeasts that produce animal-like fats with superior functionality and flavour that customers are demanding.

Product Features

• The fats have lower saturated fat levels (40-60% vs. 90% of coconut oil).
• They offer better functionality than coconut oil to impart a better taste to meat and dairy analogues.
• The entire technology platform is scalable due to the existing and outsourced fermentation infrastructure.

Customization and Intellectual Property

The fats are customizable to various food and non-food applications and will benefit alternative meat producers within the EU and globally. Our technology is protected by a robust IP strategy and patents.

Patent Overview

• We have 10 granted patents and 2 pending patents across 5 patent families.
• The innovation stems from 2 crucial components protected by these IPs that allow us to efficiently produce highly tailored fats.

Project Development

We have already scaled up our first product to pilot scale (TRL 5). Within this project, we will:

1. Improve our production process.
2. Scale up further to demo scale.
3. Conduct extensive application tests.

This will allow us to advance to TRL 8 and significantly de-risk our investment case.