EU backs Melt & Marble’s fermentation-based “designer fats” for meat and dairy alternatives

30 Jul 2024 --- Sweden-based Melt & Marble has secured a €2.5 million (US$2.7 million) grant and potential future equity investment by the European Innovation Council (EIC) to scale and commercialize its innovative fermentation-based fats to deliver healthy, energy- and resource-efficient, low-emission foods.

Additionally, the Horizon Europe Framework Programme (Horizon), which is a part of the EU’s “Farm to Fork” strategy, has also supplied funds worth €260,000 (US$ 281,450).

The food tech company will use the cash injection to further scale its process and advance to pre-commercial levels. The funds will also support the application development of its first products - MeatyMarble and DairyMarble, which are fat substitutes for alt-meat and alt-dairy applications.

“This funding will help bring us a step closer to offering delicious and healthy meat and dairy analogs, significantly improving both sustainability and food security,” says Anastasia Krivoruchko, co-founder & CEO of Melt & Marble.

Next-generation of dairy fats
The company formulates designer fats using its precision fermentation and microbial engineering platform, which allows the production of any fat from simple feedstocks without relying on unsustainable animal and plant sources.

The company leverages precision fermentation to produce sustainable fats for alt-meat products.The latest funding is part of the project “Delicious,” coordinated by Rise Processum, a partially owned subsidiary of Rise Research Institutes of Sweden. The initiative includes companies and R&D organizations across Europe and tests new ideas and products from laboratory to demo scale, acting as a link between research and commercialization.

Melt & Marble will focus on developing dairy fats for enhancing the organoleptic properties of dairy analogs and accelerate the company’s DairyMarble program.

The fermentation-based fats can be used in the next-generation of cheeses, butters and bakery products, notes the company.

Alt-meat innovations
Melt & Marble’s other product, MeatyMarble, is a solid, meat-like fat designed to replicate the properties of animal-derived fats for use in alternative meat products.

Previously, the company innovated a “beef-like prototype” of non-animal fat with a melting profile of meat by programming yeasts to take in sugars and convert them to fat.