Bon Vivant toasts taking $15.9M to brew up versatile animal-free dairy proteins
Summary
Bon Vivants 19-month head-start on this road means it has a good chance to establish a lead, though, he believes.Alt protein startups have faced some challenges in recent times -- especially those cooking up products that aim to disrupt the traditional meat industry. "Bon Vivant is anticipating the U.S. market will be where it obtained its first regulatory clearance -- and its hoping to be able to commercialize its milk proteins there as soon as 2025.MacMillan tells us he expects the process of obtaining regulatory clearance in the European Union to take longer (he suggests two to three years), on account of the blocs more stringent food safety rules.The new funding is being poured into scaling its production capacity towards, down the line, the commercial scale production needed to be a supplier to food giants. Were going to be able to produce only samples -- but they will allow us to accelerate tests and trials, innovation, IP production, all that," he notes, adding that the seed will also be spent on working towards regulatory clearances -- paving the way for commercializing its novel milk proteins in a few years time if all goes to plan.While food startups that are cooking up alternatives to meat -- whether lab-grown or plant-based -- continue to face attacks from the traditional meat industry, such as suggestions their products are unhealthily ultraprocessed or unnatural frankenmeat (or even attempts to sew doubt they have a lower carbon footprint than meat from farming animals), MacMillan sees a far more collaborative relationship blossoming between alt dairy producers and the traditional dairy industry.Indeed, he doesnt like the term "alternative" being applied to Bon Vivants milk proteins as he argues its products will be "complementary" to traditional dairy, rather than a complete replacement for animal-based milk -- at least certainly not for the foreseeable future. So being a supplement, rather than trying to supplant, is the best strategy.He argues precision fermented milk proteins could be a boon to the supply-constrained dairy industry by helping it tackle the challenge of rising demand for milk-based products while simultaneously providing a way for it to reduce its carbon footprint and align itself with a pressing, global sustainability agenda.He even suggests we may see dairy products appearing on supermarket shelves in the future that contain a blent of both types of proteins: precision fermented and those squeezed directly from a cows udder. "On the environmental credentials side, Bon Vivant recently published an early LCA (aka, Lifecycle Assessment Report), which was undertaken by a third party -- comparing production of 2,160 tonnes/year of its fermented, animal-free whey protein against the same quantity of cows milk.