Dutch fermentation startup Farmless announced that it has raised €4.8 million to produce functional proteins for the F&B industry without relying on the climate, exploiting animals, or using the land.
The company’s proteins are said to provide a complete amino acid profile, competing with the nutritional value of beef. They suit multiple applications, including meat, dairy, and egg alternatives, said the company in a statement.
The seed round was co-led by World Fund and Vorwerk Ventures, with participation from previous investor Revent. With new funds, Farmless will build a pilot brewery in Amsterdam, further develop its fermentation platform, and continue the regulatory approval process for novel foods.
Adnan Oner, founder and CEO of Farmless, commented: “If we unlock the protein producing powers of the microbial kingdoms we can create a future worth getting excited about. We can have an abundant, cruelty-free food supply and rewild the world, restore forests, all while drawing down gigatonnes of CO2 from the air.”
Decoupling from agriculture
Oner established Farmless last May to offer a cost-effective food production model independent of agriculture, regions, or weather. The company’s disruptive approach and affordable, simple, and efficient fermentation platform attracted multiple investors, raising 1.2 million in a pre-seed round immediately after its launch.
“At World Fund, we only invest in startups with the greatest climate performance potential”
The company’s fermentation process feeds microorganisms a liquid made with CO2, hydrogen, nitrogen, and renewable energy. To completely decouple from agriculture, the company has targeted bacteria that do not feed on sugar — a common staple used in the industry.
After fermentation, the microorganisms, part of the end product, are separated from water, dried, and turned into a high-protein powder. Farmless claims this fermentation process is carbon neutral and requires 5000 times less land to produce 1 Kg of proteins than beef.
According to the Dutch biotech, agriculture uses 70% of all habitable land on earth; from this percentage, 77% is used for livestock farming. Additionally, animal agriculture is among the major drivers of climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pesticide use (for soy monocultures used as feed), freshwater depletion, nitrogen runoff, and other problems such as antibiotic resistance and pandemics.
Moving away from sugar
The global air-based foods market is expected to reach a value of US$ 100 million by the end of 2032 as consumers and producers look increasingly toward sustainable proteins. Other companies competing in this challenging fermentation field that uses gases instead of sugar to produce food include Finland’s Solar Foods, Air Protein from California, Austria’s Arkeon Biotechnologies, and Californian company Calysta.
Dr. Nadine Geiser, Principal at World Fund, shared: “Moving away from sugar as a feedstock for fermentation represents a significant opportunity to reduce CO2 emissions of fermentation-based food production. At World Fund, we only invest in startups with the greatest climate performance potential – and there is a significant need to reduce emissions in the farming, agriculture and land use category.”
