Cultimate Foods UG raises €700.000 in pre-seed financing

Berlin food-tech specialist Cultimate Foods UG has raised €700.000 in a pre-seed round led by Big Idea Ventures LLC, ProVeg International e.V. and Realum.cloud GmbH. The biotech company provides plant-based meat alternatives with a more authentic taste by replicating animal fat tissue biotechnologically.

With global meat consumption steadily growing, and its production having detrimental impacts on the climate, the environment and biodiversity, millions of consumers already try to reduce their meat consumption. The biggest lever to reduce energy consumption and agriculture’s [15%] share of global CO₂ emissions is the big reduction in land-use change when consumers switch to plant-based protein alternatives. Thus plant-based meat or other food can offer environmentally-friendly and sustainable alternatives to meat if logistics don’t overcompensate the positive environmental effects that plant-based protein offer compared to meat or milk protein. However, many consumers to date are unsatisfied with the taste of vegan meat.  

“I believe science is the answer to many of the problems of the food industry and, by extension, to climate change. With our technology we can give consumers the meaty taste that they want while reducing animal farming and CO₂ emissions,” stated Eugenia Sagué, co-founder of Cultimate Foods. Sagué and co-founder George Zheleznyi as well as the R&D team, previously worked in the plant-based food industry and thus appreciate the challenges and aspire to further their technological approach of 3D cultivating the structure of animal fat tissue to improve the taste of vegan food alternatives. The company now expanded and launched its own laboratory in Göttingen, Germany.

George Zheleznyi stated, “Our ultimate goal is to deliver a game-changing ingredient for the plant-based meat industry. We are focused on developing the most important part of meat experience, fat. Cultimate will deliver all the properties of meat that are currently lacking in the available meat alternatives.”

The offer of Cultimate Foods might complement the offer of Leuven-based Paleo BV that produces species-specific heme proteins by precision fermentation. Heme proteins account for most of the taste and colour of animal meat but only make up 0,2% of animal protein. Thus, it is sufficient to produce some thousands of litres of heme protein, that will come to the market next year, to cover the world market.