BlueNalu and Nutreco partnership poised to make a splash in cell-cultured seafood

14 Mar 2023 --- BlueNalu has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Nutreco, a global player in animal nutrition and aquafeed. Building on earlier collaborations, this agreement represents a joint interest in establishing and scaling up a food-grade supply chain for cell-cultured seafood manufacturing.

This collaboration includes an initial phase in which BlueNalu and Nutreco will join forces to reduce cell feed costs and establish specifications and metrics for certain raw materials necessary to produce BlueNalu’s proprietary cell-cultured seafood products.

This LOI constitutes the third agreement between the two companies that originated in December 2019 and coincided with the participation of Nutreco in the series A round financing of BlueNalu. 

This next stage of the companies’ partnership marks the beginning of Nutreco’s food-grade supply chain infrastructure development parallel to BlueNalu’s production phases, from pilot scale development to regulatory stages and its subsequent commercialization activities.

Healthy and sustainable protein solutions
Importantly, these specifications must meet food-grade regulatory requirements for nations where BlueNalu plans to market its products.

BlueNalu bluefin tuna suspension muscle-derived cells were shown in studies to grow equally fast in food-grade and pharmaceutical-grade cell culture media.“Our vision to create a healthy, secure and sustainable protein solution with cell-cultured seafood starts by solving several key challenge areas, including the shift from a pharma-grade to food-grade ingredient supply,” says co-founder Lou Cooperhouse, co-founder, president and CEO at BlueNalu. 

“Between our team’s innovation and strategic partners, we’ve continued to overcome hurdles. We are excited to strengthen our partnership with Nutreco as we aim to scale together to bring nutritious seafood products to consumers worldwide.”

“At Nutreco, it is our purpose to feed the growing global population safely and sustainably and we understand the important role cell-cultured proteins can play in addressing this global challenge,” adds Joost Matthijssen, chief strategy officer at Nutreco. 

“That is why we are pleased to invest further to support BlueNalu’s ongoing development and commercialization efforts and the cell-cultured industry at large.”

Path to commercial viability 
This agreement complements BlueNalu’s prior announcement regarding its large-scale commercialization plans and business differentiation with whole muscle product forms; a non-GMO, single-cell suspension line and proprietary lipid-loading technology for continuous production.

“Our team has achieved significant technological feats that have reinforced our pathway and support commercial viability,” explains Lauran Madden, Ph.D., chief technology officer at BlueNalu.

BlueNalu intends to bring a portfolio of seafood products to global markets. Its first commercial product will be the high-value toro portion of bluefin tuna, which is in great demand from the foodservice sector, yet is increasingly inaccessible and associated with considerable sustainability challenges worldwide.

Edited by Elizabeth Green