Photo: Guy Ackermans The market for vegetarian and vegan food is growing fast but food companies are facing the difficult question of how to replace the chicken protein in food products with vegetable-based proteins. FUMI Ingredients says that it has developed a sustainable and relatively cheap production method for vegan proteins. Several major food companies have already expressed an interest in their proteins, says the start-up.
Algae
The new technique lets FUMI Ingredients produce any protein that is requested from microorganisms or algae. The start-up run by Edgar Suarez Garcia and Corjan van den Berg has validated the technique in the lab and now they want to scale up the production process to the factory level. On 30 January, FUMI announced that two investors, Innovation Industries and Shift Invest, are jointly providing half a million euros for these production operations.
PhD Research
The new production method was developed by Edgar Suarez Garcia as part of his PhD research in the Bioprocess Technology chair group. After he received his PhD, he and his co-supervisor Corjan van den Berg decided to start a company to apply the method, which had been patented by that point. They still receive support in their research and development from the Bioprocess Technology group and from WUR’s AlgaeParc. Last year, StartLife helped FUMI InPHOTO: GUY ACKERMANS gredient set up and develop the company.
