A $1.75 million investment round has been completed by the Israeli molecular farming business PoLoPo to scale up its unique method for producing animal proteins in potatoes. The money will boost research and development activities and grow the company’s core personnel so that prototypes will be available in 18 months. FoodLabs led the Pre-seed round, and further investors include CPT Capital, Siddhi Capital, Plug and Play Ventures, Milk & Honey Ventures, and HackCapital.
To address the protein needs of the food industry and feed the expanding global population, PoLoPo has created a patented technology that allows proteins to be expressed in potatoes in a scalable, economical manner. In addition, the business is constructing a technological platform for protein manufacturing, beginning with Ovalbumin (the egg white protein), focusing on the $26.6 billion egg protein market and the industry’s rising need for alternatives to egg white protein. Dr. Maya Sapir-Mir, the co-founder of PoLoPo, remarked, “We’re happy to have attracted a group of such distinguished and like-minded investors. With this significant sum of money, we want to accomplish numerous vital goals, such as developing protein-rich potato tubers and functioning samples of ovalbumin.
“We want to provide the world with better meals. A significant potential to achieve this is provided by molecular farming technology, which also eliminates the need for using animals and lowers the carbon footprint of the manufacturing process, “Dr. Raya Liberman-Aloni remarked.
How Can Alternative Protein Become Mainstream?
Recently Boston Consulting Group provided a report on taking alternative proteins mainstream as it could be one of the solutions to decreasing the carbon emissions from the agriculture industry significantly. In fact, BCG estimates that increasing the global market share of alternative proteins from 2% to 8% by 2030 could be equivalent to decarbonizing 95% of the aviation industry. Nonetheless, according to the report, certain milestones will need to be reached before becoming mainstream mainly:
- Applying a Consumer-centric Lens: Most consumers do not base their decision on sustainability but on other factors such as taste, nutritional value, and price. Areas where most alternative protein companies haven’t been able to communicate yet, as the overarching marketing message is more about the sustainability aspect of the product and not so much about the taste, the ease of cooking, or the pricing strategy.
- Adjusting the marketing and communication: The report also found that including ‘vegan’ or ‘vegetarian’ labeling could have negative consequences when reaching mainstream consumers as it identifies a particular group of people and is unlikely to resonate with the rest.
- More innovation is needed on taste, texture, and price: Mainstream consumers still believe a significant gap exists between the taste of alternative protein and traditional meat despite the net improvements seen over the years.
Photo by Hai Nguyen on Unsplash
