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Lyon, France-based precision fermentation startup Bon Vivant, which is utilizing biotech strategies to reprogram yeast microorganisms to provide animal-free milk proteins with a considerably decrease environmental footprint than conventional dairy, credit readability of technique and execution for holding its buyers enthused at a time when elevating stays a problem for a lot of tech founders.
All the buyers in its April 2022 pre-seed (€4M) adopted on for the oversubscribed €15M (~$15.9M) seed it’s asserting at the moment, in line with CEO and co-founder, Stéphane MacMillan. The spherical is co-led by Sofinnova Partners and Sparkfood, with Captech Santé additionally taking part. Other buyers in Bon Vivant embrace Alliance for Impact, High Flyers Capital, Kima Ventures, Founders Future and Picus Capital.
MacMillan factors to a choice he and his co-founder, Hélène Briand, made to focus solely on a b2b enterprise mannequin — which means the novel protein startup is aiming to be a provider for, not competitor to, the meals business — as one thing buyers have particularly appreciated.
“Since the beginning we’re focused — b2b oriented. And in Europe, in particular, almost all [competitors] are still b2c, b2b2c; [or have an] unclear strategy. That’s a big differentiator,” he tells TechCrunch. “I think that explains why, in only 19 months, we’ve attracted investors — because since the beginning we have a strategy that is clear and that we are executing on which helps a lot, obviously. Because there’s clarity. Then the team is structured this way. The processes are put in place… So that’s, I think, one of the key decisions why also we attracted Sofinnova, which is the biggest VC in biotech in Europe.”
“My view is when you are a startup you need to understand, pretty closely on the value chain, where are you good — and actually better than anyone else to do it?” he provides. “I take into account that constructing the tech, constructing the method of fermentation, doing purification. All of that we will deliver so much… But in relation to advertising and marketing, distribution and producing tonnes of ultimate product, I don’t assume I’m going to be higher than any Danone or Nestlé.
“Honestly, I don’t want to compete with them… I would love to partner with them and then actually also if you’re serious about the [environmental] impact that you want to drive and… you are really serious about your mission then the only way to have the bigger impact is to help the guys that are doing tonnes of dairy products every single day. And so you don’t want to fight them on marketing, distribution and new product but help them with an ingredient that allows them to reduce their footprint.”
The dairy business and different purchasers Bon Vivant is concentrating on to promote its yeast-grown milk proteins are inquisitive about its substances to reply all types of “functionality needs”, per MacMillan — whether or not it’s making a gelling impact, foaming, texturizing and many others — and he says there’s no approach to do this with just one sort of milk protein popping out of the fermenting vats. Hence why it’s creating microbial yeast strains that may produce whey and casein to make sure broad versatility for the multinational “food industrials” it needs to promote to.
“Since the beginning, we have two workstreams: One is on whey; another one is on caseins. Because that’s just part of the strategy; we want to answer — and to be the one-stop-shop b2b leader for — dairy and food industrials,” he says.
Bon Vivant co-founders: Hélène Briand and Stéphane MacMillan (Image credit: Bon Vivant)
MacMillan suggests this additionally offers Bon Vivant an edge vs rivals which have targeted extra narrowly, a minimum of initially — saying he doesn’t assume anybody else within the cow-free milk house is (presently) engaged on each milk proteins. But he concedes the sector is transferring shortly and says he expects opponents will converge on the identical technique (so he’s anticipating extra pivots to b2b). Bon Vivant’s 19-month head-start on this highway means it has a superb likelihood to ascertain a lead, although, he believes.
Alt protein startups have confronted some challenges in current instances — particularly these cooking up merchandise that purpose to disrupt the normal meat business. But in relation to producing non-animal primarily based dairy the sector is much less crowded. Though there are some massive names too, corresponding to US-based Perfect Day.
Setting apart plant-based alternate options to take advantage of, that are ten-a-penny as of late (however don’t provide the identical dietary qualities, properties or style as cow’s milk), MacMillan says there are far fewer alt protein startups going after dairy. Yet with so many potential merchandise that would make use of cow-free milk proteins as an ingredient — from drinks like milkshakes, to yogurts and cheese spreads (or certainly exhausting cheese, although that’s clearly a much bigger R&D problem), confectionary and baked items, to ice-cream, and many extra moreover — he’s not sweating in regards to the competitors proper now. Indeed, the potential pie (cheesecake?) appears large enough for a lot of gamers to seize a slice.
The workforce’s focus is moderately on executing its plan to scale manufacturing and procure the required regulatory clearances so its precision fermented proteins can discover their approach into all types of meals merchandise supposed for human consumption.
Bon Vivant’s milk proteins are indistinguishable from cow’s milk proteins so might — technically — be used to provide ‘vegan’ cow’s milk merchandise since no cows have been harmed within the manufacturing course of. (The cow’s DNA that’s mixed with the yeast comes from a cell financial institution.) But as a b2b provider Bon Vivant isn’t going to be a producer of vegan milk — or every other particular foodstuff. Its ambitions are broader: It needs to produce the meals business’s big want for extra sustainable dairy proteins.
“The market we all have to serve is enormous. It’s just massive,” he says. “And when you look at it, how many startups are we working on it right now, I think we are maybe like 30 something, 35 maybe… and that’s really a small number. Compared to, take for example cell-based meat — which is a brand new technology, amazing one, and I mean it’s still a real moonshot — [where] you have maybe 300 startups? Well-financed in the world. It’s crazy. So, I don’t think there is so much, to be honest, competition between all of us [non-animal dairy startups]. We really have all to be focused on the big food industrials that are waiting on us to produce 1,000s of tonnes. That is the focus.”
Bon Vivant is anticipating the US market shall be the place it obtained its first regulatory clearance — and it’s hoping to have the ability to commercialize its milk proteins there as quickly as 2025.
MacMillan tells us he expects the method of acquiring regulatory clearance within the European Union to take longer (he suggests two to a few years), on account of the bloc’s extra stringent meals security guidelines.
The new funding is being poured into scaling its manufacturing capability in direction of, down the road, the business scale manufacturing wanted to be a provider to meals giants. But there are nonetheless quite a lot of phases on the highway to get there. And MacMillan confirms it is going to be persevering with to make use of third events to assist with manufacturing for the foreseeable future (he suggests this is a bonus of having the ability to leverage an current approach, i.e. precision fermentation, to make a novel meals product — whereas lab-grown meat startups should sort out organising novel manufacturing strategies too).
Bon Vivant will use the seed funding to open a brand new lab in Lyon so it may produce extra samples for its goal purchasers within the meals business (“partners” is the way it refers to them presently; however, it hopes, purchasers sooner or later if/when it secures contracts). The lab will be capable to produce 40 litres of product so nonetheless approach beneath business scale. It will even allow the startup to dial up testing and product improvement, per MacMillan.
“We are building our own lab. It’s still only pre-production. We’re 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, including that the seed will even be spent on working in direction of regulatory clearances — paving the best way for commercializing its novel milk proteins in a couple of years’ time if all goes to plan.
While meals startups which can be cooking up alternate options to meat — whether or not lab-grown or plant-based — proceed to face assaults from the normal meat business, corresponding to strategies their merchandise are unhealthily ultraprocessed or unnatural ‘frankenmeat’ (and even makes an attempt to stitch doubt they’ve a decrease carbon footprint than meat from farming animals), MacMillan sees a much more collaborative relationship blossoming between alt dairy producers and the normal dairy business.
Indeed, he doesn’t just like the time period “alternative” being utilized to Bon Vivant’s milk proteins as he argues its merchandise shall be “complementary” to conventional dairy, moderately than a whole substitute for animal-based milk — a minimum of actually not for the foreseeable future. The assumption is modifications to how established meals techniques function gained’t occur in a single day. So being a complement, moderately than attempting to supplant, is one of the best technique.
He argues precision fermented milk proteins could possibly be a boon to the supply-constrained dairy business by serving to it sort out the problem of rising demand for milk-based merchandise whereas concurrently offering a approach for it to cut back its carbon footprint and align itself with a urgent, international sustainability agenda.
He even suggests we may even see dairy merchandise showing on grocery store cabinets sooner or later that include a blent of each kinds of proteins: precision fermented and people squeezed instantly from a cow’s udder.
“We are really at the beginning of all this — we you only start to understand exactly the power of biotechnology and precision fermentation. So I think that at the end of the day, I would say the idea is not to replace the milk at all. It’s more complimentary,” he suggests. “So if already we might cut back — by 30% — greenhouse emissions of dairy merchandise, so make a hybrid product, you’d use milk and a number of the proteins that we’re producing, for instance, you would scale back the usage of [cows] that will work already — as a result of that’s the entire level, proper?
“So, to me, I really see it as a complementary technology, rather than replacing [traditional dairy] — because we won’t replace all milk. I mean, that’s not the objective. So yeah, so assume at some point here, soon enough, you will be able to have animal proteins, old dairy products. I don’t see why not.”
“You also have to be realistic here and see what we’re talking about,” he continues. “It’s a large business. [Big reductions in traditional dairy production] won’t occur in a single day. No approach truly… Demand [for dairy] is rising, like so much. At the identical time, milk manufacturing is lowering. So there’s already a niche that we have to fill with our expertise.
“The only way to really achieve what we want to achieve — which is reduce the carbon footprint, reduce the water consumption and all that; everyone wants to do that — we need to work all together on that to make it happen sooner rather than later. In any case, I mean, it’s not going to happen overnight. We’re not in the digital world where you can just [blitz-scale a new product]. It’s the real world.”
On the environmental credentials facet, Bon Vivant just lately printed an early LCA (aka, Lifecycle Assessment Report), which was undertaken by a 3rd occasion — evaluating manufacturing of 2,160 tonnes/12 months of its fermented, animal-free whey protein towards the same amount of cow’s milk. The research additionally factored within the manufacturing of the extra carbohydrates, lipids, minerals and many others required to mix with its whey proteins to make an equal product to cow’s milk.
Results from this early LCA look very promising — suggesting Bon Vivant’s precision fermentation course of might cut back greenhouse fuel emissions by 97%; consuming water consumption by 99%; and power utilization by 50% in comparison with acquiring the identical quantity of milk from cows.
“Even though those figures, most probably, will move — because the process will change; and we will have to do a new version of the LCA probably once a year — still when you are at those type of figures — and if it’s not 99%, it’s going to be, what, 95? 92%? — it’s still massive. And that’s why it’s really important,” he provides. “It still means that you have a tremendous impact. That’s why it’s really, really cool.”
Starting a enterprise that would have an effect was one of many mounted standards MacMillan set himself when, in direction of the tip of 2020, he was casting round to provide you with his subsequent massive startup thought. (One of two prior startups he co-founded was the e-scooter agency Circ, which was acquired by Bird in 2020; the opposite was a meals supply agency). Also on his wish-list was a enterprise he could possibly be constructing over the long term — for “the next ten years”. With precision fermented milk proteins he appears to have discovered the candy spot.
Commenting on Bon Vivant’s seed elevate in a press release, Michael Krel, companion at Sofinnova Partners, added: “Bon Vivant’s pioneering work in animal-free dairy proteins through precision fermentation aligns perfectly with Sofinnova’s mission to promote sustainable solutions for a healthier planet. We are delighted to support Stéphane, [co-founder] Hélène and the team as they continue to transform the dairy sector and contribute to a more sustainable agri-food era”.