European dairy giant Hochland has teamed up with precision fermentation specialist Those Vegan Cowboys, to test the start-up’s cow-free casein in semi-hard and hard cheeses.

Those Vegan Cowboys (TVC), headquartered in Belgium and founded in 2019, produces caseins using precision fermentation – a process that uses no animal inputs, making its dairy proteins vegan-friendly. Traditionally derived from bovine milk, casein is responsible for many of the taste and textural properties of cheese, such as stretching and melting.

Belgian-Dutch start-up TVC has been working with several cheese producers in the last year to find out how its casein behaves in different circumstances at lab-scale. In October 2024, the company announced that its microbial casein had been discovered to outperform the cow’s casein currently used in cheese under certain conditions.

The new partnership with Hochland aims to take the start-up’s cheese developments to the next level, with TVC’s CEO, Hille van der Kaa, describing the joint development agreement as an “important next step on the route to commercialisation”.

 “Our partners have seen better stretching and melting compared to the animal-sourced version, allowing cheese producers to use less casein with the same result,” van der Kaa added. “This will ultimately lower the price of cheese. Now that we’ve got this casein, we want it to make as big an impact as possible.”

Germany-headquartered, family-owned Hochland is one of Europe’s largest private cheese manufacturers, reporting a turnover of €2.25 billion and 413,800 tonnes of cheese sales in 2023. It has around 6,100 employees globally, with a product portfolio that includes dairy brands Hochland, Almette, Grünländer and Patros, as well as the plant-based dairy brand Simply V.

Hochland said the partnership fits well with its long-term sustainability ambitions. It builds on the group’s recent sustainability initiative, ‘Milch für Hochland,’ in which it eliminated the use of herbicides and substrates that could contain plastic particles on meadows and fields.

Hubert Staub, CEO of Hochland, commented: “Our dairy-based business will remain our strong core business, but we see that there is a demand for alternatives and we want to provide the best quality to our consumers. Milk proteins derived by precision fermentation could be a great solution.”

With a ninth-generation farmer as a founder, and with most of its management team coming from farming backgrounds, TVC sees farmers as ‘vital partners’ moving forward.

Chief commercial officer, Robert van den Breemer, said: “This new way of cheese making can relieve dairy farmers from several heavy societal issues they’ve been burdened with. We can grow past the cow's physical limitations in the healthiest way imaginable, and feed five times the number of people from the same amount of land.”

He continued: “This can bring farmers the freedom to welcome more nature into their way of working, regain their role as stewards of the land and be acknowledged and rewarded for their services, way beyond maximising milk production. Stainless steel cows can relieve the heavy lifting of mass production, in a healthier way.”

According to TVC, its microbial casein requires only a fifth of the land and water compared to animal-based casein – and is estimated to produce 80% less CO2 as well as no methane. The casein could also be used to develop healthier cheeses that contain no saturated fats, lactose and cholesterol, while retaining cheese’s organoleptic qualities.

TVC is preparing to file for worldwide market approval, as precision-fermented casein is classified as a novel food. It expects to enter the US market in 2025, with Asia to follow, while market entry in Europe is expected within three to four years. Additionally, it will organise its first tastings in the Netherlands later this year.

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