Svenja Prosseda is CEO and joint founder of Senara GmbH, which has engineered the technology and is now producing cultivated cow milk. Its primary focus is on producing cow milk sustainably; using bioreactor technology to cultivate bio-identical milk, outside of the cow.
This young company has already been recognised with a slew of accolades. Just this week Senara was shortlisted in the last 20 from around 5,500 competitors, by SLUSH 2024. Svenja and her husband and co-founder Phillip Prosseda will soon travel to Helsinki for the announcement of the winners with a potential €1,000,000 investment. This will certainly help them reach their objective to commercialise cell-cultivated milk by 2028.
“Cows are not efficient milk-making machines”
Scientific and technological advancements in dairy farming has seen milk yields increased dramatically over the last century. Through the use of mechanisation, automation, selective breeding, and nutritional changes, the dairy industry has found ever more inventive ways of milking a cow – and of getting more from it.
Much of the progress has resulted in a diminished standard of life for the cow itself, spending more time indoors for feed efficiency and seeing an increased use of antibiotics. But with the demand for milk increasing and with a global need to reduce methane emissions to reach net-zero objectives, perhaps the next great leap forward for dairy farming will see the removal of the cow altogether.
Svenja Prosseda was interviewed by Alex Crisp from Future of Foods Interviews.
What inspired you to venture into the cultivated milk space?
I grew up in a farming family, in the middle of the German countryside. My grandparents had a herd of dairy cows and the milk was sold locally each day. It was all very organic and we grew up with this very idyllic view of farming. That’s no longer what dairy farming is these days and I think many people don’t realise how much has changed in such a relatively short amount of time, in one generation. Cows have mostly gone indoors now. In Western Europe and the USA particularly, fewer cows spend their days grazing outdoors due to pressure for year-round milk production and the need for intensive feed to maintain high output.
Also, my daughter was unable to drink cow milk because of the proteins it contains. This affects a lot of people. So we, my husband [who is co-founder of the company] and I, wanted to find a milk composition that enhances all of the great things about milk but cuts out those potentially harmful things. The things that aren’t necessarily things that need to be in the milk for it to taste the same.
“The demand is there for a kinder more environmentally sustainable milk”
Also, I feel some disillusionment with where we are at as a species in the year 2024 – by now what we should have achieved. I believe we should be living in a better future or at least be looking at how that future might be better but it feels like we’re very slow at getting there. So we want to bridge the gap between what is known in science R&D, especially in dairy, and add it to real-life applications, to get the future we deserve. Maybe that’s a little bit over the top but it’s how I see it.
How do you see this innovation transforming the dairy industry?
Well, the dairy industry as we know it will not survive in the future if they don’t dramatically change the way they produce milk. They are struggling with finding solutions to the problems associated with producing the quantities needed to feed a growing world population. The current methods mean they are a major producer of food-related emissions, methane and the like.
I think consumers are hoping for a suitable alternative but are not getting it. The alternatives that are out there are not up to scratch. Plant-based milk in all its varieties may be more sustainable but the taste isn’t right or the functionality isn’t right. We have to find an alternative that is just as good as milk, is sustainable, is kinder, and is better for the planet. That’s what we’re doing at Senara.
You just need to ask yourself – what if? What if we could have exactly the same product at the same cost, but with none of the bad stuff which is attached to it – why wouldn’t everybody want it?
What successes and milestones are you most proud of so far in your business journey?
We produced the world’s first glass of self-cultivated milk. It’s a small way towards the millions of litres that we will eventually produce. But it’s a very good start.
Just this year we’ve been winning a lot of stuff. We’ve been recognised in the top20 startups by SLUSH, based in Helsinki. Companies such as Airbnb were once on that list. Just getting to this position is a major achievement. We recently won the Wittenstein Biointelligence Award. We’ve also been nominated for the Breaking Walls which is like the Nobel Prize for innovation. So that nomination is encouraging. We’ve been mentioned in the FoodTech 500, the 500 most influential FoodTech startups globally.
We’ve also managed to achieve funding and grow our team as well as build some very exciting collaborations. So it’s all going very well.
How do you assess the market potential for this product?
There is a lot of interest from the food industry and also from the nonfood industry in a better milk, particularly in the EU. The industry has to start cutting emissions or at least they’ll have to justify the emissions they produce. Pretty soon they’ll have to report them which I believe is going to change business decisions. Some companies are opting out of selling potentially high-emission products – such as ice cream. These are products Senara can help produce with a far lower emission impact. So people around the world can continue to enjoy their favourite dairy products. The demand is there for a kinder more environmentally sustainable milk.
Milk is an essential ingredient in so many products. Imagine, for example, breakfast without milk – what would you have left – just an apple?
What milestones are you aiming to achieve in the next three to five years?
We are ahead of schedule with our growth plans, we have generated the first revenues already. and we aim to collaborate with interested parties from the industry to drive growth over the next few years.
“We have identified several countries and regions that have the highest likelihood of a quick approval and of potentially embracing the potential of cell-cultivated milk products.”
We are building our first commercial-scale production facility for cell-cultivated milk. So we will be providing cell-cultivated milk directly and also potentially licensing the technology and hardware for companies to produce their own milk in the future. By 2030, we hope to have the capacity to produce up to 1 million litres of milk, for this, we are quickly finding industry partners to help us scale.
How does cultivated milk differ from both plant-based milk and other alternatives like precision fermentation?
Cell-cultivated milk is clearly distinct from plant-based milk and the other alternatives because cell-cultivated milk is not an alternative. It is an animal milk. It is a full animal milk with full functionality and it has the potential to be bio-identical in composition, indistinguishable from what people are used to drinking.
There are three aspects – the taste, the functionality, and the nutritional value. Plant-based milk does not have the same taste as animal milk. It doesn’t necessarily have the same functionality. On the nutritional side of things, it doesn’t have the full composition but often has enhancers so that the milk stays in a milky state. So plant-based milk is something completely different, it’s an alternative, but it is not something that can replace milk in all of its aspects.
“Humanity has always sought to do things better and more effectively”
Precision fermentation can recreate certain proteins in the milk, but that’s only a fraction of the things that you find in real milk. 0.1% of milk is made up in terms of one protein. So the full functionality depends on mimicking that very complex composition, because milk is one of the most complex foods out there. You can only really replicate if you use the cell-cultivated approach.
Have you raised any funding so far? If so, how have you allocated those resources?
Yes, we raised seed funding, and pre-seed funding last year, mainly to start reducing the cost of the cell cultivation media, which is a big part of the production costs. As a result, we have seen a 12-fold reduction in the cost of the cell cultivation media since last year. We were also able to upscale the production to show that it’s a scalable process. We have commissioned the world’s first pre-industrial scale bioreactor system, which should be finished and operational by the beginning of 2025.
What was the cost of a litre of milk a year ago and what do you hope the cost to be by the end of 2025?
The media cost has reduced from around 1000 euros per litre of media. By 2026, we think we can reach six euros per litre. With upscaling the production, we project that we can reach price parity with farmed milk by 2028, less than a euro per litre.
What is your strategy for navigating regulatory approval?
We have identified several countries and regions that have the highest likelihood of a quick approval and of potentially embracing the potential of cell-cultivated milk products.
Some countries such as the UK and Singapore have shown an awareness and willingness to adapt their systems to the new technology. Some other jurisdictions are still trying to familiarise themselves with the new science. These can be very slow processes. There are several regions worldwide that have a very good track record of supporting innovations, who provide good guidance and transparent processes. The movement often boils down to the ready enthusiasm or acceptance of individuals positioned in the right places.
We hope to have received substantive acceptance in our chosen jurisdictions by the time we’re ready to go commercial. 2026 will hopefully be a fruitful year in this regard. At least by 2028 when the price is at parity.
Do you have any plans for geographic or product line expansion?
Yes, we do. It will surprise most people to learn just how many everyday products contain milk as an ingredient – including pharmaceuticals and pet food, as well as all the baked goods everybody is so used to. Imagine the idea of cats and dogs drinking milk that is better suited to their own biological needs – cat milk or dog milk. The opportunities are virtually limitless. There are opportunities to produce cow-free chocolate too, perhaps ice cream, or cheese. The list goes on.
And what challenges do you anticipate with scaling up the business?
The challenges are just about hardware and money. We don’t have the same difficulties faced by cultivated meat companies because we are not constructing anything, we are more like blending things together. Our process perhaps has fewer constraints. We see no difficulty in scaling up so long as we get the right kind of support.
If you go to any dairy farm you’ll see huge tanks filled with milk, so this is not very different from that – it’s only the production method before it reaches the tank that’s different.
How are you planning to mitigate risks as you scale and navigate the competitive landscape?
We are very focused on the job at hand and we have a great team working on the product and its delivery and scale. All the people involved are excited to bring the product to market, for whatever personal reasons they have. Many of our team are doing the work for environmental reasons, others for animal welfare reasons. All of them are focused on creating a perfect solution to a burgeoning food crisis.
What are your long-term ambitions for the company, and where do you see it in the next decade?
We hope our product will become a major part of the solution, helping to feed a growing population. We hope our technology will be used in countries that currently struggle to get the nutritional benefits from dairy that the rest of the world takes for granted. Our cultivated milk will offer an alternative. Humanity has always sought to do things better and more effectively.
Our method produces milk in a much more efficient way than current dairy methods. Cows are not efficient milk-making machines – they need at least 10 times the input before they produce the protein. We can produce milk with a fraction of the material input. Also, when there are so many cows together they can cause significant pollution and environmental harm. We hope to help solve these real-life problems.
