In this edition of 'Start-up spotlight,' we speak to Melt&Marble, a Swedish producer of precision-fermented 'designer fat' ingredients that can be used to enhance plant-based meat alternatives and more. Anastasia Krivoruchko, the company's co-founder and CEO, tells us more.
What led to Melt&Marble’s establishment and what is the company’s long-term mission?
Our long-term mission is to enable the transition towards a sustainable agri-food system by providing different industries with the next generation of sustainable designer fats that solve a range of unmet needs.
We are a spin-out from the Systems and Synthetic Biology Group at Chalmers University of Technology. The group was established by Jens Nielsen, a world-leading scientist in metabolic engineering, and focused its research on using microbes to produce diverse products in a more sustainable and efficient way. Jens Nielsen himself is a co-founder of Melt&Marble, while Florian David (another co-founder and Melt&Marble’s CSO) and I were senior researchers in the group.
As far back as 2010, the group started working on projects related to engineering microbial lipid metabolism to produce tailored lipids for different industries. During this time, we developed various know-how and IP on engineering microbes to produce fats and other lipids with desired compositions and properties. Melt&Marble was initially formed as a patent holding company for some of the innovations arising from this research.
In 2021, we realised that there is a strong need for better fats for the alternative protein industry – fats that give better mouthfeel and juiciness to alternative protein products and that are also more sustainable than plant-based fats. Our technology allows us to do just that. In addition, we were very excited about the potential impact of helping the alternative protein industry grow. We therefore decided to pivot our business model to focus on developing our own products to address this need. Now we’re focusing on better fats for alternative meat and dairy, as well as confectionery and personal care applications.
How does the precision fermentation process work?
The key to our technology, the ‘precision’ part, is actually what happens before the fermentation/production process, and that is creating a yeast strain capable of producing a fat with desired composition and functionality. Fats can come in many different forms and the main properties of the fat, such as its melting profile, mouthfeel, taste and health profile are all connected to its composition (i.e. what sort of fatty acids are in the fat and how these are assembled).
In order to create a yeast strain that produces a fat with desired properties, we first make some predictions of what composition would give these properties. We then use synthetic biology tools to rewire our yeast’s metabolism in order to get it to produce these desired fats.
Once we have obtained a yeast strain meeting the desired criteria, we can use it to produce the fat at high quantities. This involves growing the yeast in fermentation tanks with sugars and minerals and then harvesting the fat. The production process itself is similar to brewing, except that our yeast produce fats instead of alcohol.
The beauty of this process is that not only can we tailor-make the properties of the fats we’re producing and replicate any kind of fat, but also that it’s compatible with a variety of feedstocks, ranging from traditional feedstocks such as dextrose, to different side/waste streams. This means that we can adapt the feedstock used depending on where in the world we’re producing. Our process can be used anywhere, independently of any climate and weather conditions. This versatility makes it a lot more robust compared to traditional agriculture and will make fermentation a key solution to achieving food security and climate resilience in the future.
What are some of the key benefits of Melt&Marble’s ‘designer fat’ ingredients in plant-based food formulations?
With our initial products, we are mostly aiming for better functionality – such as improved mouthfeel, texture and juiciness. Meatier flavour is another key element that we are currently working on integrating into our products.
From a nutritional perspective, our fats also have a few benefits. Since our technology essentially allows us to build fats from the ground up, it allows us to replicate the positive characteristics of animal fats (such as better mouthfeel), and leave out their negative characteristics. For example, unlike actual animal fats, our fats have no cholesterol or trans fatty acids. Compared to plant-based fats such as coconut oil, our fats are also significantly less saturated. Furthermore, our fats actually contain beneficial ingredients such as healthy fatty acids and other bioactives.
Although there is still work to be done on different fronts, we remain well on track to achieving our overall vision of producing a range of fats, tailored to different applications, with optimal functionality, taste and health profiles.
What key food and beverage industry trends and consumer demands can Melt&Marble respond to with its solutions?
When it comes to consumer acceptance of plant-based meat and dairy, taste is still king. We aim to help our customers make their products taste better so that more and more consumers make the decision to buy the alternatives instead of the real thing.
Beyond this, consumers are conscious of both health and sustainability aspects, which our products also help to address.
What has been the company’s biggest achievement so far?
We hit several key milestones over the past year ranging from process improvement to moving and equipping a brand new HQ, generating new strains for new products and building a team of brilliant and passionate people to propel our vision forward.
Perhaps one of our biggest recent achievements has been successful scale-up of our fermentation process. While we are still very much on this journey, so far we have been able to scale more than a thousand fold (from single litres to thousands of litres), with the larger scale process mimicking our process performance at the lab scale well.
Fermentation scale-up can often be especially tricky since the larger the scale, the more susceptible the organism to contamination and instability, and our success in this regard so far is a testament to the robustness of our production process and the hard work of our bioprocess team. This is also another checkmark in de-risking our journey to commercialisation.
Have there been any particular challenges? If so, how has Melt&Marble navigated these?
For us to be successful, we must understand what fat compositions give desired properties, engineer our microbes to produce those fat compositions at sufficient levels, ensure that the resulting organism is robust and scalable, and understand how the resulting fat behaves in different formulations. None of these things are trivial – we’re talking pretty deep tech here, and the combination of several scientific disciplines. Things rarely work perfectly on the first try, and we often have to go through several cycles of optimisation before we get the results that we want.
Luckily for us, we can really build up on the large body of scientific knowledge we have generated over the past decade, as well as our different tools and existing strain library. This makes the overall process a lot more efficient than it otherwise would’ve been.
Where is Melt&Marble currently on its commercialisation journey?
Right now, we’re testing our fats together with many different partners and in different applications. This will generate many new insights about which applications our products work best in, which product features work well and which still have to be improved, etc. We are aiming to convert some of these partnerships into launch partners.
In parallel, we are in the process of scaling up our process and taking the first steps for regulatory approval.
What’s next for the business? Any exciting plans on the horizon?
Lots of exciting plans! As mentioned above, we’re currently scaling up and preparing the groundwork for the launch of our first product. In addition, we have generated some new strains with fat compositions relevant to other applications such as dairy and confectionery, and are planning to start application development on those soon. The goal is that in a few years’ time, our fats will be found in a diverse array of food products, ranging from alternative meat and dairy, to confectionery, bakery product, personal care products and beyond, making these products tastier, healthier and more sustainable.
And finally, for aspiring start-ups in the plant-based F&B sector, what valuable advice or insights would you share to help them navigate the challenges and opportunities in this dynamic industry?
Considering the dynamic nature of the industry, it’s important to build an organisation that is adaptable and resilient. Aim to have a solution that can tackle multiple sectors and/or address multiple problems. Keep an eye out on market trends and opportunities, and be prepared to pivot your strategies if needed. It’s a pity to see great start-ups fail due to external market factors.
Keep in mind the importance of the team you’re building – whether you’re a first-time founder looking for a co-founder, or a new start-up building a team, I can’t stress enough how crucial it is to have like-minded people that you can trust. This will not only enable better execution of the company’s goals, but also makes navigating the ups and downs of the start-up journey much easier – and more fun!
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