Jooules, a New Zealand startup that turns greenhouse gas emissions into protein ingredients, has secured NZ$1 million in a pre-seed round led by early-stage investor Sprout Agritech LP.
David McLellan, a participant in the Sprout Accelerator program, founded Jooules to transform protein production with an animal and land-free process that delivers a climate-positive ingredient.
A pioneer in New Zealand, the startup leverages cutting-edge science, gaseous fermentation, and specific microbe strains that consume CO2 and turn it into a complete protein powder.
“The team’s approach leapfrogs other solutions in both innovation and ambition”
With the new capital, the startup plans to grow its technical team and scale its platform while it develops products in collaboration with the Crown research entity SCION.
Warren Bebb, investment manager at Sprout, shares, “They’ve invented a way to address a global challenge that uses the problem – carbon dioxide – as a pathway to food. The team’s approach leapfrogs other solutions in both innovation and ambition and we’re hugely excited to see what the team is able to achieve as it accelerates its investment into product development and testing.”
A new source of proteins
Jooules explains that it uses ancient microbes and gaseous fermentation (instead of precision fermentation like other air-based proteins) to produce its ingredient from carbon dioxide.
Its fermentation process is said to be more efficient than traditional protein production: it uses significantly less water (600 times less) and 99% less land, while it reduces carbon emissions by food that sequesters carbon dioxide from other side streams.
Regarding nutrition, according to the company, early testing has confirmed that its climate-positive proteins are nutritionally dense, containing all nine essential amino acids and meeting FAO‘s standards for complete proteins.
McLellan comments, “Through the recent advancements in fermentation technology, we are able to produce a new source of nutritionally complete foods.”
Powering the future of food
More importantly, according to the startup, the process is potentially scalable to provide protein ingredients to large-scale food and feed manufacturers.
Nonetheless, these proteins must undergo regulatory approval, as they are classified as novel foods, before commercialization. Jooles’s initial focus is on the Asia-Pacific region, but it plans to enter other markets with comparable novel food regulations in the future.
He adds, “Producing a product we can sell – business to business – empowers the world’s food manufacturers to address the source of the problem – Scope 3 emissions associated with their supply chain – at scale. We’re excited to be powering the future of food from New Zealand to the world.”
