Time-travelling Milkman extracts fat ingredients from sunflower seeds and aims to supply these ingredients to producers of plant-based cream cheese and cottage cheese to boost their creaminess and nutritional value. Last year the startup received funding from the Dutch Research Council NWO to improve the production process. This summer Oost NL and Shift Invest together invested 550,000 euros to scale up the production of plant-based fats.
‘Last year, we were still doing lab work, mainly,’ explains product developer Saskia Tersteeg of Time-travelling Milkman. ‘In the past year we have built a customer base and developed products together with those customers. Now we are about to start producing on an industrial scale.’
We are about to start producing on an industrial scale’
Time-travelling Milkman has two end products: a powder and a cream made from sunflower seeds. The production process for the two end products is different. The start-up is collaborating with contract manufacturers to achieve faster market entry but dreams of having its own factory in a few years. Tersteeg studied Food Technology at WUR, founder Dimitris Karefyllakis got his PhD in the Food Process Engineering group and co-founder Costas Nikiforidis is a researcher at the Biobased Chemistry and Technology group, alongside his role as an advisor to Time-travelling Milkman. Tersteeg: ‘We were able to use the Food Process Engineering lab for a long time, but this month we are moving from Plus Ultra II to the agribusiness park in Wageningen, where we will have our own lab.’
There are about 100 companies on the campus. We introduce them to you in Resource. This time: Time-Travelling Milkman.
