In this month’s edition of The Plant Base’s Start-up spotlight, we speak to Myco, a UK-based producer of alternative protein created from vertically farmed oyster mushrooms. David Wood, the company’s CEO, tells us more about the sustainability benefits of Myco’s innovation and how it is bringing a UK-first approach to the plant-based industry.
What led to Myco’s establishment and what is the company’s long-term mission?
We are parents and grandparents and there’s a shared desire to give our children and grandchildren – and the planet – a future.
The way that we know we can help is by producing a product that makes food more sustainable, and a product that makes swapping out meat easier.
Our product is a protein called Hooba, and all the testing suggests it looks, tastes and has the same ‘mouthfeel’ as meat – albeit made from oyster mushrooms.
We farm it vertically, and the whole process aligns with our long-term mission of aiding sustainability.
What are some of the sustainability benefits of Myco’s approach?
Our production unit is in Leeming Bar, just off the A1 in North Yorkshire. The proximity of it means we have slashed the number of food miles involved in the production of Hooba, which has driven down our carbon footprint even further.
But the whole process of producing a plant-based protein is ultimately far greener than producing meat.
Livestock is one of the biggest drivers of carbon emissions but many people aren’t aware that a high proportion of plant-based products also have high food miles due to soy being grown and transported around the world.
Ultimately, eating less meat and more plants makes us all that bit healthier – and leads to a more sustainable future for every single one of us.
How will the new site in Yorkshire bring an industry-first facility to the UK?
By vertically farming our product there is no deforestation, and our protein production pods mean zero food miles. Our site allows us to make a lot more protein than you would expect. The unit is 20,000-square-feet and we can grow a lot of mushrooms in that space – 1,000 tons, in fact.
The Leeming Bar site is also the first of its kind to have a mushroom growing facility under the same roof as the food production area, so while vertical farming itself isn’t a brand-new concept in the UK, nowhere in the country has ever had both production aspects in one place.
That means we can proudly state that Hooba has ‘zero’ food miles in the protein supply chain – that’s huge for sustainability, and it is a model we genuinely hope will act as the global blueprint going forward as it can be replicated anywhere.
What kind of benefits will this bring to the country’s food and beverage industry?
The first benefit the public will really see will come this month, when we launch the UK’s first- ever vertically farmed products. That’s going to be a real milestone and demonstrates just how far the plant-based industry has come in such a short period.
Currently, raw ingredients can often be transported thousands of miles, but this has the potential to put an end to that. It could see the UK eventually lead the way in delivering global food security – one of humanity’s biggest threats – whilst lowering the nation’s carbon footprint substantially.
Has the company encountered any particular challenges? If so, how have you navigated them?
Launching any new product is never smooth, especially a concept – like a vertically farmed production site – that hasn’t been seen in the UK before.
Funding of innovation is never easy, but we’ve managed it and we’ve now got plenty of interest from some major names within the food industry looking at Hooba as an option for their plant-based ranges.
But there’s still a stigma around plant-based protein, particularly surrounding some of claims around processing and sustainability. However, we’re proud that our product will be best-in-class in both of these areas.
Not only will our vertically farmed mushrooms be more sustainable and better for the environment, our new product range will only contain five to ten kitchen cupboard ingredients, unlike some heavily processed plant-based products.
Trying to convey the message that this is as natural as it gets can be tough in the current climate, but we believe transparency is the way forward.
What has Myco’s biggest achievement been so far?
We are proud of a lot of work to date. We started this with a lot of hope, excitement and high expectations, and they’ve only grown along the journey.
The development of the onsite protein growing facility feels really special, simply because there’s currently nothing else like it. To develop a genuine UK-first is a special feeling, and what makes us even more excited is that feeling that now we’ve cracked the nut, hopefully everyone will start to copy us.
But we are also excited about the delicious range of products we are launching in March, which we hope will find a place on barbecues across the country – and even on the grills of some committed meat eaters.
The feedback we’ve had is exactly what we hoped to hear when we set about this project. The aim was to create a plant-based product that looked, felt and tasted like meat and that’s exactly what the feedback we’ve received has stated.
As a group of people doing this to try and preserve our planet, we want to go to bed each night feeling the work we are doing is helping with that aim – and so far, we feel we are.
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