Melt&Marble, a Swedish precision fermentation company, has moved its headquarters to Gothenburg, where it has precision fermentation innovation facilities, including molecular biology and microbiology labs, bioreactors up to pilot scale, and a food application test kitchen.
The facilities will accelerate development of Melt&Marble’s designer fat ingredients, marking an important milestone for the company’s commercialization of more sustainable and healthy fats.
Melt&Marble has scaled up the production process for its first product, a solid fat designed to replicate the properties of animal-derived fats for use in alternative meat products, to cubic meter bioreactor scale. This is an achievement on the path to commercial-scale production, and the company is now in the process of scaling further to tens of cubic meters.
‘’We are excited about the achievements to date,” says Anastasia Krivoruchko, co-founder & CEO. ‘’In the last months, we constantly improved key performance indicators related to rate, titer and yield, successfully achieving metrics relevant for commercial-scale and demonstrating the scalability of our process.”
Furthering its path to market, the company has secured a partnership to reach commercial scale, allowing production of hundreds of kilograms of fat per batch in the coming months, with further expansion potential to tons per batch in 2025, when the company is eyeing a launch in the U.S. market.
‘’We see a great deal of interest from industry players in our technology both in Europe and in the U.S., because it allows us to tune the composition and properties of our fats and create animal-free ingredients that are both delicious and sustainable,” says Thomas Cresswell, chief business officer. “Palatability remains a challenge in the animal-free food space and our fats are an extremely effective way to address that by replicating the taste experience consumers crave. The recent milestones position us on the path to accelerate toward commercialization in the coming months and we are eyeing a market entry in the US as soon as early 2025. Our new facilities will allow us to test applications and produce samples in-house while our manufacturing partnership paves a clear path to market.’’
Melt&Marble’s technology enables precise control of its fats’ composition and properties, allowing it to create designer fats from the ground up. This means dictating the types of fatty acids, as well as how these fatty acids assemble on to a glycerol backbone to form specific triglycerides.
Beyond the food industry, Melt&Marble is exploring applications in other industries, including personal care, where demand for new sources of sustainable specialty fats has been increasing in recent years, driven by consumer demand.
