NEWS 8 F&A Alternative Proteins Edition April 2023 Saudi Industrial Investment Group (SIIG) agreed to invest US$70 million in sustainable protein company Unibio International PLC. The company will use the investment to improve the world’s food security. Unibio International PLC, the leading sustainable protein company, announced that the Saudi Industrial Investment Group (SIIG) has signed an agreement to invest approximately US$70 million (GBP 59 million) in Unibio. The proceeds will be deployed to enable Unibio’s vision of feeding the world’s growing population sustainably. Unibio will use the funds to roll out new global production capacity, grow operating capabilities, and accelerate innovation and commercialization. Through industrial protein production based on Unibio’s unique fermentation technology – the U-Loop® technology – it is possible to improve food security and feed the world’s growing population sustainably without the use of arable land and with low water usage. The fermentation technology mimics a process that occurs in nature every day and uses methane (e.g. natural gas or biogas) as feedstock. The production of Uniprotein® is efficient, stable, and independent of weather deviations that impact the production of traditional protein sources. Uniprotein® is approved for feed in the European Union and global registrations are in progress. Read more>> Mosa Meat, a leader in the cultivated meat space that grows beef directly from animal cells, signed a Letter of Intent with Nutreco, a global leader in animal nutrition and aqua feed, to collaborate on creating a cell feed supply chain. This announcement is a new milestone in the longstanding partnership between Mosa Meat and its investor Nutreco – jointly awarded a REACT-EU grant for their ‘Feed for Meat’ project in October 2021, which strives to lower the cost of cultivated beef while creating a robust supply chain to scale up production. Optimising cell feed has been widely considered a key challenge that needs to be overcome for the nascent cultivated meat industry to reach the commercialisation stage. The LOI between Mosa Meat and Nutreco comes after scientists at the two companies have confirmed that a basal media (cell feed) formulated with food-grade ingredients instead of pharma-grade ones performs equally well at a substantially lower cost – a critical step to further develop the cellular agriculture supply chain. Furthermore, scientists at Mosa Meat confirmed that 99.2% of the basal media by weight has been successfully replaced by food-grade components in the serum-free cell feed. “Our partnership with Nutreco represents our commitment to further develop the cellular agriculture supply chain and bring down costs,” shared Maarten Bosch, CEO of Mosa Meat. “Our scientific results are an industry first, proving that food-grade ingredients perform equivalent to pharma-grade in cell feed. This will represent a significant cost savings as we scale up production.” Read more>> SIIG to invest in sustainable protein company Unibio Mosa Meat and Nutreco work together to reduce cost of cell feed
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