How can we feed a growing population with finite resources? Precision fermentation may be the answer. Here are 5 companies developing this technology in Australia.
With the global population predicted to reach 10 billion before the end of the century, we need more protein than ever. But as the environmental impacts of farming continue to grow, there are real questions about whether we can sustainably meet growing global protein requirements. Some people think the answer lies in leaving agriculture behind.
New technologies like cellular agriculture, plant based meats and precision fermentation offer promising solutions to the protein problem. Here we take a quick look at the Australian companies commercialising precision fermentation technologies.
What is precision fermentation?
Simply put, precision fermentation is a newer, high tech iteration of brewing processes similar to those used to make beer. It involves using micro-organisms, like yeasts and fungi, which are specially engineered to produce specific chemicals, ranging from proteins and fats to non-food applications like pharmaceuticals. The microbes consume a feedstock and produce the target molecules.
Right now, the major food source for these microbes is usually refined sugar. Australian access to large quantities of cheap sugarcane gives it a natural advantage in the marketplace. But other carbon sources, even waste sources and atmospheric carbon dioxide, are being investigated as alternatives, meaning precision fermentation could be a key technology in the circular economy.
Why is it important?
In brief, population and climate change. With population growing, the world will struggle to find the growing amount of land, energy and water needed to feed people using traditional agricultural methods to produce livestock and crops.
Already, farming is a major cause of land clearing and habitat destruction, and responsible for a significant proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions.
But just as agriculture contributes to climate change, climate change makes agricultural production and yields less certain. In a world of ever more extreme weather, it’s difficult to predict whether the livestock and crops we rely on today can continue to be grown into the future.
In contrast, precision fermentation uses resources far more efficiently. By moving from farm to factory we not only reduce environmental impacts we reduce our reliance on geography and climate to feed ourselves. Precision fermentation is potentially a path to both environmental sustainability and food security.
Who are the Australian companies?
Food Frontier, ”the independent think tank on alternative proteins in Australia and New Zealand”, lists five Australian companies in their directory. Reading through the listings quickly reveals that precision fermentation covers a range of production process technologies which produce different goods.
Most of these companies are making cow-free dairy substitutes – either whole foods or a selection of dairy proteins. All G Foods uses precision fermentation to make whey proteins with plans to turn these into yoghurt, cheese and milk. Change Foods (based in Australia and the USA) makes animal free cheese by starting with precision fermentation to create the dairy proteins, then using traditional cheese making techniques to make a product that tastes and behaves just like traditional cheese.
Eden Brew uses precision fermentation to make animal free milk. Their innovation is the formation of casein micelles – when many casein molecules self arrange into a larger structure – which imparts the particular taste and textural properties we experience when drinking dairy milk.
Nourish Ingredients takes a different direction; instead of making whole foods, they make the fats and oils that are missing from other products made with alternative proteins to improve their taste. Their products are designed to taste, smell and cook identically to those from animals, but be healthier.
Other companies are using precision fermentation to make products beyond food. Cauldron have developed a continuous process instead of more traditional batch processing which can be used to produce a range of products from food proteins to cosmetics to fuels.
Who is backing them?
Novel proteins are a topical area of innovation right now. One of the missions in the CSIRO Missions Program is Future Protein. This program is about “mission oriented innovation” as it says on their website “to deliver impact and build innovation system capability for the long term”. In other words, maintaining Australia’s well being and prosperity in the face of looming challenges like climate change and geopolitical insecurity.
While the Mission covers both traditional animal agriculture, and plant based meat, it also includes ‘novel protein’. They have partnered with Eden Brew to support their animal free, cholesterol free, lactose free precision fermented milk product. Future research priorities under this Mission include improving costs and yields, novel processes and equipment designs and new microbes to replace sugar feedstocks with food waste and carbon dioxide.
In addition to support for research, there is investment support for companies too. One of the priority areas for investment in the Australian Government’s National Reconstruction Fund is value add in agriculture. Currently, most of the feedstock for precision fermentation is a plant crop, usually sugar cane. So precision fermentation projects may align with this priority. The opportunity becomes even more interesting when you consider the possibilities beyond protein production. Future farmers might produce feedstocks to replace those from crude oil and value add in agriculture could soon have a much broader meaning beyond food.
Precision fermentation companies have been very successful in raising capital. Main Sequence Ventures, founded by CSIRO, has invested in three: Nourish Ingredients, Cauldron and Eden Brew. These companies have all raised substantial amounts of capital over the last few years.
In 2022, Nourish Ingredients raised $28.6 million USD in their Series A funding round and in 2023, they secured $5.8 million in government funding. Last year, Eden Brew raised $24.4 million in their Series A round and $6 million from Breakthrough Victoria. While this year, Cauldron raised a total of $20 million from several investors, including $9.5 million from a series A funding round. Cauldron also received $500,000 in Queensland government funding to develop the business case for a partnership for a $300 million facility.
The other two companies have been similarly successful. In 2022 All G Foods raised $25 million in a Series A round following a $16 million investment in 2021. Also in 2022, Change Foods secured over $15 million in seed funding.
Despite the evident interest from government and the private sector, and funding flowing to research hubs and university partnerships, bio-manufacturing, including precision fermentation was not a focus in the recent federal Budget’s announcement of $22.7 billion for A Future Made in Australia.
The potential benefits of precision fermentation are significant. As the global population grows, it becomes harder and harder to balance the need to feed people with the health of natural ecosystems and habitats. There is only so much land on one planet. Greenhouse gases produced by farming are a large portion of global emissions. But agriculture both contributes to and is harmed by global warming. The act of producing food damages the climate systems we rely for that production.
In contrast, precision fermentation offers an alternative that is much more resource efficient. But like any process, it needs resources, and like any novel science it takes time, money and research to fully realise the gains. Furthermore, to be successful, precision fermentation must feed a population that expects it to replicate a complex and wide ranging set of tastes, smells and textures.
Can precision fermentation deliver on all that? Investors seem to think so. It will be fascinating to watch these new developments.
Heidi Doak 