Standing Ovation wins Industria Biotec’s start-up pitch

The French food-tech company Standing Ovation has won the first start-up pitch at Industria Biotec, which takes place today in Berlin. Founded in 2020 and based in Paris, the food tech company aims to become a major player in the €2.5 billion vegan cheese market, part of the €27 billion vegan food market. Standing Ovation has developed a fermentation process to produce animal-free casein, the most abundant (80%) protein in cheese. Casein gives non-animal and lactose-free substitutes for cheese and dairy products the texture, taste, and physical properties of natural cheese. The innovation helps to reduce the CO₂ emissions from agriculture. Casein gives milk its white appearance and physical properties.

Standing Ovation SA just recently  closed an oversubscribed €12m Series A financing round led by Astanor Ventures. The company‘s business goal is to participate in the consumer hype on sustainable animal-free milk proteins. Global protein demand, and animal protein in particular, is increasingly dramatically while livestock farming represents 15% of greenhouse gas emissions.

The very first Industria Biotec in Berlin focuses on the latest developments and new biotechnological products and processes that mitigate the impact of the current energy and climate crisis, such as the decarbonisation of biofuel and energy production, sustain to produce casein, the most abundant proteinin cheeseable food and vegan protein production, the recycling of waste and industrial production streams to defossilise industrial production, and the biotechnological production of chemicals. The packed international conference and networking event focuses on five streams: food, capital, waste, energy and chemicals. Five othe companies participated in the start-up pitch.

Brussels-based Paleo BV develops meat and fish proteins through precision fermentation. The company, spun off from the University of Brussels in 2020, uses a patented process to produce GMO-free heme proteins that are bioidentical with six animal proteins (chicken, beef, pork, lamb, tuna and mammoth). When the hemeproteins are added to plant-based products, the result is the ultimate meat or fish experience. The company expects to launch the first GMO-free labelled alternative protein products next year.

Berlin and Barcelona-based company Esencia Foods, founded in this March, produces fish and seafood products through solid state fermentation of fungal mycelium. The products are similar in taste and texture to real fish, whose natural stocks will be exhausted by 2048.

Berlin-based start-up Ucaneo BIOTECH GmbH develops the world’s first cell-free Direct Air Capture technology leveraging a biocatalytic membrane to capture CO₂ from the air. The company’s goal, that works at the intersection of climate tech and synthetic biology, is to capture 1% of the global CO₂ emissions by 2035.

The Mannheim-based Badische Peptide & Proteine GmbH (BPP) specialises in the solvent-free production and analysis of cyclic peptides and proteins using green biotechnology.

German Akribion Genomics, which was spun off from BRAIN Biotech AG in September, will commercialise the BRAIN Group’s patented genome editing platform technology based on the non-Cas9 nuclease. Applications are in the optimisation of microbial production strains, agricultural and pharmaceutical biotechnology.