3D food printing: Steakholder Foods CEO talks alt-meat formulation and overcoming challenges

From 3D-printed eel to vegan salmon filet, food companies are increasingly exploring 3D food printing to target the flavors and mouthfeel of conventional meat that appeal to a broad range of consumer palates. Israel-based Steakholder Foods manufactures 3D-printing production machines and proprietary premix blends to help firms meet consumer expectations for taste, texture and appearance while offering a “safe and sustainable alternative to industrialized meat and seafood production.”

Food Ingredients First sits down with Arik Kaufman, CEO of Steakholder Foods, who takes us behind the scenes of the company’s new demonstration center, allowing customers to see how its 3D printers formulate meat and seafood alternatives in real-time before purchasing the equipment.

“Through 3D printing, we can structure complex matrices of alternative proteins, whole cuts in the meat and very complex matrices of seafood and fish products.”

He believes the demo center will be useful for start-ups in the alt-protein space to understand how they work in an industrial environment. “I think that for each start-up, the phase when it wants to shift from resource and development to commercialization is very challenging.”

“We have developed this demo center with the mindset that our potential customers can come and look and feel exactly the machines as they are supposed to be in their facility,” he states.

Proof of concept to finalization

The alt-protein company is showcasing two 3D printers at the site. The first is the MX200 Printer, which uses Fused Paste Layering technology that combines plant-based proteins and fats to mimic traditional meat textures. The other is the HD144 Printer, which employs Drop Location in Space technology for precise placement of plant-based ingredients to replicate seafood textures, such as tender fish and flaky filets.

We spoke with Kaufman for his insights on 3D food printing challenges and market opportunities.The company, established in 2019, started with a “proof on concept” for these machines and worked on their hygiene and efficiency before they were ready to be placed in factories, Kaufman tells us.

“The output and the throughput of these machines is supposed to be very high. For example, the 3D meat printer prints with an output of half a ton per hour. Our proof of concept machines did not print at that high pace.”

“All of this was developed with the mindset that these machines will be able to be positioned in factories, and today, we’ve reached the stage that we have real machines that comply with all the full requirements and that can be positioned into factories.”

Earlier this year, the company expanded its business by partnering with frozen foods manufacturer and distributor Premazon to unveil its plant-based white fish kebabs.

Plant-based prefixes as the ink

In the past, these proof of concept machines 3D printed cultured meat, he reveals. They used “real cells that were proliferated, grown outside of the body of the animal” as inputs.

But now, the company uses plant-based premixes to formulate alternative meat products. “The output of the machines includes whole cuts, filet, ribeye and chicken breast. We know how to integrate these cells into the premixes, and print the output as a hybrid product.”

The company’s live demo center showcases its 3D printing production line for customer engagement.The two main premixes added to the 3D printer include muscle and fat, with the printer head knowing how to layer these muscle and fat ingredients. “It’s like a perfect matrix to create the marbling, taste and texture,” Kaufman explains.

Tapping technology for marbling

Alt-meat manufacturers aim to achieve an important aspect of conventional meat: marbling, which research states is one of the most important traits in determining the quality of meat. Additionally, consumers often consider the “richness” of marbling as the primary factor when buying meat as it contributes to its sensory characteristics.

Steakholder Foods’ 3D printing technology prints muscle and fat that helps achieve the marbling in alt-meat, which Kaufman believes sets it apart from others.

“Marbling is linked to taste and the mouthfeel that you get from a steak and a whole cut. To achieve the marbling in a thin cut or a whole cut or a filet mignon, we know how to mix these two ingredients into one and then 3D print them in order to achieve the mouth feel of a filet, where you don’t have the marbling.”

The company has also developed a software that is linked to its 3D printers to achieve marbling in plant-based meat products, he shares. 

“The software can determine exactly how the 3D printer will layer each ingredient separately, perfectly and on an industrial scale.”

Design and output challenges

Despite the technology’s advancements, Kaufman believes 3D printing has not caught up widely in the food industry due to its low output.

“The more sophisticated the machine is, the lower is its capacity and throughput. It takes time to structure something that is sophisticated compared to an extruder where you can put ingredients and the outbound and inbound of the products is the same.”

Steakholder Foods has developed a software to achieve marbling similar to steaks in plant-based meat.The output of extrusion machines is also higher than 3D printers, he adds. “So the main challenge from our point of view was to achieve a very sophisticated output product, but without harming the throughput of the machine.”

He also highlights the design of the machines as another challenge specifically for foods, since manufacturers need to be careful about avoiding the ingredients’ contribution to contamination.

“They need to be designed with a mindset that everything can be sanitized and washed. And that’s also a very sophisticated challenge if you want to develop a machine that can print at mass scale and is cost competitive compared to the alternative protein products that are out there today.”

Another issue is the need to adapt and optimize printers to each food type as there is currently no universal 3D food printer that can print multiple food types at scale, flags a research by the UK’s Food Standards Agency. The agency expects such multi-food printers, capable of printing more complex foods, to reach the market in the next five to ten years.

Kaufman also believes 3D printing is here to stay. 

“We’ve already published agreements signed with the alternative protein manufacturers to sell our printers and the premixes.” 

In the future, he expects to see more sophisticated alt-protein products entering the market, including cultivated meat products — not as a “conceptual taste event,” but as products that consumers can afford and taste.