Founded in 2022, the Berlin startup Cultimate Foods specialises in the cultivation of animal fat. As an ingredient, the fat is intended to give plant-based meat products an authentic meat flavour and texture. The result is a hybrid product, i.e. a combination of plant-based protein and cell-based ingredients. At the end of April 2024, the company received from leading biotech and foodtech investors.
Eugenia Sagué, co-founder and MD, and Senior Scientist Dr Marline Kirsch explain why the company decided to cultivate fat cells, which nutrient solution is used for this and what the biggest challenges currently are for the startup.
Cultimate Foods focuses on hybrid products in which plant-based products are combined with cultured animal cells. Why are you focussing on this hybrid form and not on pure cultured meat?
Compared to cultured meat, the use of cultured fat in plant-based products offers many advantages. With this small change or the addition of a single ingredient (cultured fat), the quality and flavour experience of a meat alternative can be increased immensely. Fat is not only a flavour carrier that can be proven to be unique to an animal species, but also has a major influence on the texture, mouthfeel and juiciness of the product. There are also a number of production-related advantages.
What are the advantages?
Only a single cell type is required for the production of cultured fat. It is also readily available and can be obtained minimally invasively from biopsies. At the same time, it provides a high yield. In addition, the composition of cultured fat required for use in a hybrid product is less complex than that of cultured meat. The required media and maturation and development processes are also easier to implement and apply.
How can we visualise the cell-cultured fat? Should the end result be a kind of sauce that is poured over the plant-based carrier substance? Or is it rather cell filaments that can be interwoven with the plant-based product?
Our product can be produced in various forms. So far, we are still producing the cultivated fat in a rather viscous, i.e. viscous, form. In the future, however, it may also be offered in the form of a granulated powder, for example.
Which animal cells are the basis of your product?
We isolate stem cells from the fatty tissue of cows and pigs. We then differentiate these into fat cells using our specific differentiation protocols, i.e. a specific procedure. This means that the stem cells develop into fat cells.
Which nutrient solution is used to cultivate the cells? Is foetal calf serum added?
We have set ourselves the goal of being able to carry out our production completely free of foetal calf serum (TCS). However, as TCS is unfortunately still considered the gold standard in cell culture, we are still using it in research and development to compare the efficiency of our newly developed TCS-free media. Our aim is to develop TCS-free media that are in no way inferior to media containing TCS in terms of the growth and differentiation of our cells.
Does your company manufacture the hybrid products itself or is the cultured fat to be produced and then sold to other companies?
Our business model is B2B, i.e. business-to-business. We want to sell our cell-cultured fat exclusively as an ingredient to other food producers.
Would it also be conceivable to sell the cultured fat directly to consumers in the distant future – as a kind of spice paste similar to “Maggi” or soya sauce?
A very interesting approach and also very conceivable in the future. At the moment, however, we see ourselves as an ingredient producer.
How many employees are there at Cultimate Foods and what background do they have?
We will probably reach the number of ten people this year, mainly from the fields of life sciences, cell biology, bioprocess engineering and food science.
Why are the founders and employees of Cultimate Foods committed to cellular agriculture?
We have realised from our experience that there is no perfect solution for meat alternatives. At the same time, we want to make a contribution to reducing deforestation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and minimising factory farming.
Does Cultimate Foods already have a finished product? In what quantities can it currently produce?
Cultimate Foods already has a prototype. However, we are still working hard on various aspects to develop a finished, high-quality end product that we can also produce on a larger scale in the long term. Our goal is to be able to successfully produce on a ten-litre scale by the end of the year.
What difficulties need to be overcome in order to be able to produce on a large scale?
One of our main goals this year is to develop food-grade, TCS-free media. At the same time, we want to optimise the gram yield per litre on the current scale so that we can move straight to higher scaling with the best possible conditions.
The authorisation process for cell cultured products in the European Union (EU) is considered lengthy and complex. Are you thinking about taking your production to another country?
Yes, there are other markets that are interesting for us and that have already authorised cell-cultured products, such as Singapore and the USA. In Europe, we will probably target Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as we don’t have to go through the lengthy review process of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) there.
Some startups in the industry have found it difficult to find a laboratory for their work in the past. Have you also had this experience?
Indeed, it was particularly difficult, especially in 2022. Fortunately, the “Life Science Factory” (LSF) opened in Göttingen in 2023. And in 2024, the “BioCube” start-up centre on the campus in Berlin-Buch, a science and biotech park, was completed. We were able to get a space there. We have also maintained a close partnership with Leibniz Universität Hannover for many years. This co-operation enables us to use the bioreactors available there for our research and development projects.
Further information: cultimatefoods.com
This article was provided by journalist and vegconomist guest author Susanne van Veenendaal. As part of her book project on cultured meat entitled “The new meat culture – Why cultured meat can be good for animals, people and the environment”, on which Susanne van Veenendaal is working together with Christoph Werner and Bastian Huber from cultured-meat.shop, she is talking to various German companies, researchers and initiatives in the industry.
