Cellular agriculture advances: GEA inaugurates technology center for alternative protein industry

14 Jun 2023 --- GEA has opened a Food Application and Technology Center of Excellence (ATC) in Germany, slated as a central hub for piloting processes and products for the alternative protein industry. This comes amid a growing shift to plant-based foods and the burgeoning cultivated meat sector. Meanwhile, products like microbially-produced dairy proteins promise to feed the world’s ballooning population in an environmentally-friendly way.

GEA’s food experts will use a cell cultivation and fermentation pilot line to fast-track innovations from the lab to commercial-scale manufacturing. 

The Hildesheim-based ATC houses a pilot plant to produce sustainable alternatives to meat, milk, seafood and eggs through microbial fermentation and cell cultivation.

GEA customers will prepare processes and products for commercial production at the center. 

Technology for food NPD
The new testing platform at the center “bridges the gap between the test bench and industrial-scale production without customers having to invest in large-scale plant from the outset,” flags GEA.

GEA says its cultivation and fermentation pilot line will fast-track innovations from the lab to commercial-scale manufacturing.“Establishing and scaling up a new food production facility is a major task,” says Heinz Jürgen Kroner, senior vice president of New Food at GEA. 

“In many cases, new food producers are still stuck at the lab scale – with the hygiene, aseptic and process requirements that are involved. On the other hand, industrial-scale manufacturing presents much greater technical and financial challenges. At the ATC, our process experts explore the potential for mass production in order to make this step manageable for food manufacturers.”

Alt-meat & dairy 
Cell-based meat alternatives are now making their way onto restaurant tables with various regulatory approvals underway in Singapore and the US. 

Precision fermentation
Now, GEA says the research focus is turning to precision fermentation for milk proteins. 

One of GEA’s initial customers in this field is a scale-up from Israel called Imagindairy. 

Earlier this year, key players in the precision fermentation space formed Food Fermentation Europe (FFE), a union championing precision fermentation as the “key to a sustainable food framework.” Imagindairy is part of the collaboration. 

CEO Eyal Afergan says: “We want to make dairy products without harming the planet. To make that happen, we harness the ancient art of fermentation and combine it with science. This lets us create milk proteins with the taste, functionality, mouthfeel and nutritional value that we love about milk. Together with GEA, we can pave the way to bringing this innovation faster to the market, with the highest possible quality standards.”

The ATC complements other GEA new food centers of excellence, including for bioreactors (Hildesheim, Germany, and Skanderborg, Denmark) and cell separation (Oelde, Germany).

Edited by Gaynor Selby