Cultivated meat company Vow has partnered with food tech Nourish Ingredients to create a new hybrid alternative protein, which combines cultivated meat products flavoured with “animal-free” fat.
Sydney-based startup Vow is a pioneer in the alternative proteins sector, developing cultivated meat from cells of both livestock and non-livestock animals, according to Vow co-founder Tim Noakesmith.
“We don’t constrain ourselves to the sensory attributes of farmed animals, instead we ask ourselves how we can make meat better, looking for rich food experiences in everything from water buffalo and crocodile, to kangaroo and beyond,” said Noakesmith.
Vow has collaborated with Canberra-based Nourish Ingredients to improve the taste and feel of its cultivated meat products by incorporating fats developed through precision fermentation –bringing the key flavour element that Nourish claims enhances the palatability of meat. Nourish Ingredients uses a proprietary precision fermentation process involving yeast to create its “animal-free” fat, which the company explained can be easily scaled using existing infrastructure.
The first-of-its-kind partnership represents a growing trend in the food-tech sector, where start-ups are beginning to combine their sustainable technologies to create hybrid cultivated meat, according to Nourish Ingredients co-founder James Petrie.
“People in the space are realising that start-ups specialise in individual parts of the supply chain. I think it is inevitable that collaborations will start to happen more often across the industry,” said Petrie.
The start-ups revealed that new products under development will be cultivated from from animals not traditionally raised as livestock, such as crocodile and kangaroo, which they plan to bring to market in Singapore by the end of 2022.Vow and Nourish have both recently raised funds from venture capital, demonstrating continued investment interest in Australia’s cellular agriculture sector.