IFE Manufacturing live: Novameat presents meat-free deli turkey and pulled meat concepts without methylcellulose and carrageenan
26 Mar 2024 | Novameat
Spanish-founded start-up and foodservice supplier Novameat is harnessing opportunities for chefs in the foodservice arena to take plant-based dishes to the next level. Beatrix Ellis, commercial strategy lead, explains how the company is moving away from stigma-attached ingredients such as methylcellulose to “reinvent the plant-based space.” Ellis says they want to supply healthier alternatives to meat that can be cooked and designed in the same way as conventional meat dishes.
Alrighty This is Elizabeth Green.
I'm here at the IFE manufacturing event in London.
I'm here today with Beatrix Ellis, who's the commercial strategy lead at Nova Meat.
Now Nova Meat are a Spanish founded company.
They're here today at IFE.
And they are presenting some of their plant-based deli meats and other concepts.
So Beatrix, what can you tell us about why it's important for you to be at this kind of show and what you're presenting here today?
Thank you.
Why at this show?
No meat as presented, we're a plant-based meat company, but we're different to other people.
We're not a brand trying to be in the consumer in retail.
We are specifically a food service brand because that's where we feel there is a real gap in the market when people go out to eat, we want to make it make the plant-based options more exciting.
They've had their plant-based burger, but we need something else, and that's why we are.
At a food service show being able to get plant-based meat options towards catering companies into hotels, into restaurants where they really need to innovate a little bit more, and our products allows the chef to really create, to create as if they would with any other product rather than a ready-made burger or something.
The second reason is we are healthy and we really want food servers to be able to.
Healthy options whether you're talking to schools, whether you're talking to the catering corporate offices where people are maybe wanting to be more healthy day to day or into healthcare.
So all of these people we are trying to meet here today.
OK, interesting.
Now the plant-based sector has previously come under some scrutiny, hasn't it, using some ingredients such as carrageenan and meth cellulose.
What can you tell us about?
And how your ingredients, how you use other ingredients to make sure you get a great plant-based meat alternative metal cellulose and carrageenans are excellent at creating a kind of base, a sort of a texture in plant-based meat, and a lot of companies use them.
It's what is used in a high moisture extrusion technology which is the prevalent technology here.
It has its pros and cons, you know, it's great to have texture when you when you have a plant-based meat.
You want that bite you get from meat.
You want to bite into something that's reminiscent of of maybe chicken or beef, but unfortunately it isn't that good for you.
It is showing that it can have bad health consequences, and it's a very complex ingredients that we don't digest very.
What Nova Meat has done is we have a whole different technology where we create the fibrous texture of animal meat in our own process.
Without the need of any of those additives, so our ingredients are the pea proteins, sunflower oil, seaweed extract, and the flavorings that we use, and it's all done at a really mild temperature.
And what that means is you don't get any bitter aftertaste in our products, and so you get a really clean, natural flavoring that again the chefs can create with, and that's really what we want to do.
OK, super interesting.
Now it says on your t-shirt, plant-based reinvented.
What are the concepts that you have today at the show and How have they been received by show visitors?
The reinvention may be a bold statement, but to us it's reinvention into health.
Plant-based meat, as you started with, is getting a little bit of a bad rap.
We want to change that story because plant-based meat, we all have to do our little bit of things.
It's either for health but also for the planet, and every meal that you change has a positive impact, but you want to do it in a healthy way and you want to do it in a tasty way, and I think that we achieve both.
With this texture, so we have our, we have 4 different products actually nicely displayed here.
We have some products that are ready to cook, so our shredded beef, pulled chicken, and our chicken mini filets, and they can just slot in just like anywhere else you would use meat in your normal menu.
And then we have a deli meat that is very novel in the plant-based meat market, but this is a deli turkey.
Just put it in sandwiches.
And it's not a really turkey bite.
It's really nice.
I've tried it and I agree it's very delicious.
Didn't you win an award last year at the Plant Based World Expo.
We won the Best Deli award for Best Plant-based Deli award for turkey.
Very proud of that achievement.
Very nice to bring that back to Barcelona as.
The team has worked so many years on developing a perfect product.
Delhi is a nice showcase of how we work with the food industry because what we do is we make the raw block of the chicken and then we send it to a pastrami house in Barcelona and they make it into put the spices around it, they brine it and make it into pastrami just like they would do with normal meat, and that's really how we have reinvented plant-based meat that you can treat our product as if we were meat and you can make the same products that you would do.
With meat, that's super interesting, amazing.
And how are you, where are you sourcing your ingredients from and how do you ensure a sustainable supply chain for your ingredients?
All our ingredients are sourced from Europe, and that's really important, especially the pea protein is the largest ingredient, and we make sure that comes from France and that sauce is important.
We are currently producing in Barcelona, a European sauce.
Regionally, we will look at even more regional sourcing of ingredients, but at the moment we just focus on making sure they are from Europe.
OK, fantastic.
So are there any plans to expand the range?
I know you already have quite an extensive range, but in the future maybe we have a good range.
I feel like we can hit the majority of the meals and the dishes that you'd want to recreate, but absolutely we've got some exciting stuff on the pipeline.
Maybe the next one is enhanced beef.
The next one that we're excited about bringing out and then we're looking at other meats and meat cuts too as.
There's a full range that the R&D team is working on.
There's quite a lot of product interest now in like pulled concepts, pulled meat concepts.
Is that an area that you're also delving into?
Our core products are the pulled meat products, the pulled beef and the pulled chicken.
They're our best sellers.
They're just so easy to.
Incorporate into everything.
So at the moment this week someone is making some beef pies with our beef, so the polled product, it gives you that same bite that's reminiscent of meat, much more so than something that's just cubed.
You want that sort of differentiation in texture, and that's what you get from the pole products.
Definitely fantastic.
OK, I look forward to seeing what else comes out of the company in the future.
Thank you very much for talking to me.
Thank you.
