US startup Planetarians received US$ 6 million investment in upcycling to scale its protein production. Find out how here!
The beginning
Aleh Manchuliantsau and Max Barnthouse founded Planetarians in 2013 as a nutritional beverage company. Yes, it’s far from what the company produces now, but you’ll understand why.
They started the company with 500 dollars and sold 1 million units, but they competed with much bigger players, like Soylent, which had much more money to grow, so they focused on the following issue:
“how to counterattack without being mitigated by another injection of money?”
Analyzing the cost of their beverage ingredients, they realized that the most expensive item was protein. While a metric ton of soy protein cost $5,000 at the time, its by-product only cost $300 as it was considered a waste. From there they started a foray into upcycled ingredients.
The first investment in upcycling
They started with sunflower oil cake (oil cake is the residue left over when the oil is extracted, in this case, sunflower) transforming it into chips, but the texture was not satisfactory. They started working with Barilla and put this residue in the pasta dough, but the dark color was a problem.
Sunflower oil cake
Planetarians chips
Where does the dark color not matter?
If you’re thinking this is where the company moved on to meat substitutes, you are right! They started using this input to make solid-state fermentation, a process that uses fungi to transform residual carbohydrates from vegetable oil cake into protein. This protein would be used in the production of hamburgers, but the pandemic happened and they found themselves again with a financial problem. The new question became:
“What if we could get the benefits of fermentation, but without fermentation?”
What does beer have to do with vegan prime rib?
They started looking for what already existed on the market, that’s when they found brewer’s yeast, which is usually waste after fermenting the sugars in the production of alcohol. Its first prototypes using sunflower oil cake with brewer’s yeast resulted in a product with desirable umami flavor, texture and color.
Whole cuts are an advantage over most plant proteins, that mimic ground beef but fail to replicate a steak. Its formulation with upcycled ingredients makes its carbon footprint about 50 times better than animal meat and 9 times better than other plant-based meats.
The investment in upcycling resulted in this: this is made from brewer’s yeast and sunflower oil cake!
It took 7 years of research and development to work with as many ingredients as possible for plant-based proteins. Until they realized that brewery yeast could combine with proteins, providing flavor and texture with low cost and clean label formulation.
When you ferment beer, the target product is alcohol, not yeast, which is a problem for brewers like AB InBev to dispose of. It cannot go to the garbage, because it is bioactive, but it is a clean residue and it is a source of protein. In 2021 AB InBev agreed to give Planetarians its yeast under the condition that they could invest in the company.
They finally had money
Planetarians went through a new round, found funds willing to make the investment in upcycling and managed to raise 6.7 million dollars including the AB Inbev fund. The money will be used to build the factory and increase sales. The plan is to work with AB Inbev to produce with all the giant’s breweries around the world.
While the protein industry was developing new ways of manufacturing that required expensive infrastructure, Planetarian stood out for using existing ingredients to create an affordable and sustainable meat substitute, upcycling is what differentiate them.
AB InBev’s involvement with Planetarians wasn’t the company’s first step into upcycling either. Last year, the brewery announced a partnership with EverGrain to extract protein and fiber from malt. Want to know more about almost unknown proteins? Click here!
It can be difficult to make consumers feel comfortable eating upcycled waste, especially what used to be destined for animal feed. Having powerful food corporations like Barilla and AB Inbev behind companies like Planetarians will help upcycled ingredients reach the mass, including pasta!
Sources: Tech Crunch, Ellen Macarthur Foundation, Green Queen, The Spoon, SG Voice, Veg News
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