Food science innovator Nandi Proteins has secured over £500,000 in funding through a convertible loan from investors including Nesta, the UK’s social innovation agency, and Scottish Enterprise.
The new capital will support the development of the company’s egg white replacer for gluten-free bakery and mycoprotein alternatives, which has attracted “strong interest” from manufacturers.
Nesta Impact Investments (NII), Nesta’s investment arm, has pledged to support an upcoming equity raise with an additional £1 million to complete the target of £1.5 million. The VC Frontier IP holds a 19.7% equity stake in Nandi Proteins.
CEO David Flower shared, “We are delighted with this funding from Nesta and Scottish Enterprise and Nesta’s commitment to invest in our equity raise. It provides further validation for our innovative food ingredient technology.”
Reformulating processed foods
Based in Edinburgh, Nandi Protein was founded in 2001 as a spin-out from Heriot-Watt University to develop innovative protein-based ingredients.
After many years of R&D, Nandi has developed a technology that modifies protein functionality through controlled heat denaturation and glycation with natural sugars without harsh chemicals. By monitoring and controlling this process, Nandi says it can design ingredients with specific functionalities to replace chemical additives and binders or egg proteins.
“The formulation of products that deliver a great eating experience but address the multitude of concerns around nutrition requires a major shift in food ingredients and their functionality,” explains the company on its website.
Using this technology, the company has developed various ingredients from whey protein, collagen, and plant proteins such as oats, rapeseed, and faba beans. These solutions help manufacturers reformulate processed foods to address the growing demand for healthier and nutritional options, explains Nandi.
Replacing Eggs in food processing
Based on vegetable proteins, Nandi has developed a pipeline of egg white replacers offering different solutions: substituting Xanthan gum in gluten-free baking to improve taste and texture, replacing egg whites in mycoprotein-based meat alternatives to enable vegan products, replacing chemical binders such as methylcellulose in plant-based meat.
“Nandi’s technology has huge potential to replace undesirable ingredients”
With ongoing supply chain shortages, drifting pieces, bird flu, and plant-based trends, many companies are developing egg-free solutions. Examples include the Israeli company Egg’n’U, the Dutch food tech company Revyve, which leverages yeast to create proteins, and the US duckweed protein specialist Plantible Foods.
Frontier IP CEO Neil Crabb commented, “Nandi’s technology has huge potential to replace undesirable ingredients used widely in the food industry. We very much welcome the support from Nesta, the UK government fund for social good, which underlines the value of the company’s work.”
The company also licenses the process to ingredient and food manufacturers as it can be applied to existing equipment.
