Closing the taste gap: Melt & Marble scores €750K to create fats for plant-based meat alternatives

23 Aug 2021 --- Melt & Marble, formerly Biopetrolia, has closed a €750,000 (US$879,000) seed funding round led by Nordic FoodTech VC. The funding will boost the company’s strategy of providing sustainable fats for plant-based foods.

Demand for plant-based meat alternatives has increased, and the selection of products to cater to the demand has also expanded. However, there is still a taste gap between plant-based and animal-based meats. 

Melt & Marble, a company that works on fermentation-based animal fats, aims to erase this gap by supplying plant-based meats with a key component: animal fat, without the animal.

Tailoring fat ingredients 
The founders of Melt & Marble, Dr. Anastasia Krivoruchko, CEO, Dr. Florian David, CSO, and Professor Jens Nielsen, chair of the board, are researchers in microbial engineering and precision fermentation.

The company uses precision fermentation to produce its fats. By engineering the metabolism of yeasts, the team can mimic any fat structure and create entirely new and better fats. 

Due to this flexibility, Melt & Marble’s technology can produce tailored fats for a range of plant-based products.

“Fat is key to the experience of eating a delicious piece of meat,” says Krivoruchko.

Demand for plant-based meat alternatives continues to increase, and the selection of products to cater to the demand has expanded.“Because the properties of plant-based fats are different from those of animal fats, the experience of eating many plant-based meats has so far been subpar compared to the real thing. This is something we want to address. With our technology, we can create fats that are identical to animal fats, or even better. This could become a booster for the entire industry.”

Sustainable alternatives
The fat in current plant-based meats is mostly coconut fat and palm oil. It takes up to ten years for a coconut tree to produce its first crop and twenty years to reach the best harvests. The trees also take space from tropical biodiversity.

“With the rate that plant-based meat is growing at, there won’t be enough coconut trees to sustain the demand,” explains Lauri Reuter, partner at Nordic FoodTech VC.

“If we are to replace a meaningful part of animal production with plant-based meats, we need a more sustainable and scalable source for fats. If there is one team that can make it happen, it is Melt & Marble. They have spent over ten years in the field and have developed an unmatched technology platform to create an animal-mimicking fat without the animal.”

Lipid production 
The company’s technology platform has been under development since 2010, first within Jens Nielsen’s research group at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

As a result, the team has accumulated profound expertise in precision fermentation to produce various lipids like fats and similar products.

Initially, the company was founded as a patent-holding company for the research group, financed by providing yeast engineering services to larger companies. 

In 2021, the founders decided to pivot and focus on creating their line of fat products for plant-based meats. 

“We realized that there was this huge need in the market that our technology, which we’ve already been developing for years, was perfectly suitable to address,” explains David.

The group’s R&D efforts are underpinned by technologies such as metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, metabolic modeling and high throughput screening. 

A prototype by the end of 2021
The founders expect to taste the prototypes of beef-like fat by the end of the year. 

The company states that meat-loving consumers may still need to wait for the next generation of plant-based meats a couple of years longer.

Besides R&D, the team is planning to strengthen the management team and is currently looking for a commercial executive officer with solid leadership and business development skills. 

Edited by Elizabeth Green