Meat- and Fish Alternatives

Newly Formed Project Eaden Raises €8M For Alt Beef Products With “Unseen” Texture and Taste

Newly formed German foodtech Project Eaden announces an €8 million seed round led by Sweden-based venture capital firm Creandum. Project Eaden is looking to create a wide range of never-seen-before food products with a focus on the alt beef category.

Jan Wilmking, Project Eaden Co-founder & Managing Director, spoke with vegconomist today regarding the project’s foundation. “The more I learned about about climate change, the more worried I got. But over time it became clear to me how to do my bit: meat, especially beef is such a huge and growing problem.  And it is a field where David, Hubertus, and I found a promising, tech-driven and scalable solution.”

“Methods used so far cannot yield this kind of food. Project Eaden’s unique technology enables the efficient production of delicious sustainable food. Look, texture, and taste are unmatched and mouthwatering”

 

With early backers including Godo Röben, ex-Managing Director of famous German sausage-maker Rügenwalder Mühle, and Timo Recker, who founded LikeMeat and Next Gen Foods, the Berlin-based startup will focus on alt beef products, beginning with steak. The funds will allow Project Eaden to advance and grow its patented technology and get to work on producing the alt steak at scale.

Wilmking teases with a nugget of information, “Our technology enables cuts with unseen texture and taste,” but will not divulge further at this stage as to the USP (stay tuned for our upcoming Q&A…).

Jan Wilmking, Project Eaden
Jan Wilmking © Project Eaden

The fresh young brand’s flashy, futuristic website describes the company mission: “Let’s solve the dilemma between indulgence in the moment and preserving life on our planet in the long run. New and different food is what is missing to make billions of people switch away from beef and other meats.

“Our platform technology enables sustainable food products that have the potential to conquer the human hard-wired cravings for meat. It is highly scalable, can lead to attractive consumer prices, and broad adoption.”

Wilmking reveals that the project has been running in stealth mode for over a year: “How can we dramatically reduce meat consumption to continue living in a world full of delight for generations to come? We quietly started working on this tough question more than a year ago. Today we lift the curtain: PROJECT EADEN, our new company has raised 8 million EUR to make this dream a reality.

Tesla-of-sustainable-food
©Project Eaden

Fellow investors include early-stage VC Magnetic, Atlantic Food Labs, Shio Capital, Trellis Road, and several top-tier business angels. Besides its future-oriented approach, Project Eaden is equipped with great human capital to bring its mission to life, with the founding team consisting of Hubertus Bessau, co-founder of mymuesli, and hobby chef and engineer David Schmelzeisen as well as Wilmking, previously of Zalando.

Bessau states: “End of last year I switched from my management role to the supervisory board of mymuesli. Initially, I thought of taking a couple of months off. But I am driven as ever to use entrepreneurship to make Earth a better place, for more and for longer. How will we convince billions to switch to sustainable food? We need different food. New food without compromise, so irresistible that billions of people happily indulge. Thus saving the world becomes a pleasure.

“Our first creation will be an animal-free steak, available at the end of next year.

“Methods used so far cannot yield this kind of food. Project Eaden’s unique technology enables the efficient production of delicious sustainable food. Look, texture, and taste are unmatched and mouthwatering. Our first creation will be an animal-free steak, available at the end of next year.”

Wilmking adds, “We are really grateful and excited to have a true shot at making this happen. And we are now building up our team – so join us here in Berlin!”

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