Grassa, a Dutch company working to extract protein from grass, has raised €3.6 million to further develop its technology.
Investors in the round included Perspectieffonds Gelderland (PFG) — a Gelderland province fund managed by Oost NL — along with existing shareholders Fransen Gerrits and Brightlands Venture Partners. The funding will be used to scale up Grassa’s technology, demonstrate its benefits to dairy farmers, and develop edible grass protein for humans.
Grassa’s technology creates “unlocked grass”, which contains less unstable protein than normal grass, along with grass juice, from which protein can be extracted. The unlocked grass reduces methane and nitrogen emissions from cows when used as feed, while the grass protein provides a sustainable alternative to soy protein.
Grassa has discovered that 50% of the protein can be extracted from grass used as feed without affecting cows’ milk production. According to the company, if 25% of the grass area in the Netherlands was processed using its technology, the entire Dutch demand for soy could be met. Grassa claims that the protein is qualitatively equal to or better than soy protein, while its production does not displace any other crop since the unlocked grass is fed to cows.
“Future-proof agrifood system”
Grassa’s protein can currently only be used for animal feed, but the company is working to make it suitable for humans. In 2023, Grassa partnered with Dutch plant-based meat brand Schouten to investigate whether the technology could be used to produce a local, scalable alternative to soy protein with a lower carbon footprint.
Grassa’s technology is also mentioned in the Netherlands’ National Protein Strategy as a possible method of becoming less dependent on the import of protein-rich crops such as soy.
“We invest in innovations that contribute to a future-proof agrifood system,” said Marcel Zijp, senior investment manager at Brightlands Venture Partners. “Grassa’s technology, which converts grass into locally available vegetable protein for human consumption, is groundbreaking. The fact that cows produce the same amount of milk with the same nutritional value from the remaining grass makes this innovation globally relevant.”
