Investors are banking on a plant-based ingredient that behaves like egg whites — with potential use across a broad range of food and beverage categories. To boost its mission, B2B food tech startup Plantible announced this week the close of a $4.6M seed round, co-led by Hong Kong-based early-stage venture capital group Vectr Ventures and New York-based Lerer Hippeau, along with Kellogg’s venture arm eighteen94 Capital and San Francisco-based Food for Thought Worldwide (FTW) Ventures.
The company’s star protein-packed ingredient, RuBisCO, or “Rubi protein,” is extracted from lemna, an aquatic plant that’s more commonly called “duckweed.” The company says RuBisCO is significantly more protein efficient than beef (50,000 times), peas (400 times) and soybeans (100 times) and has no additives.
“Plant-based protein ingredients are not created equal,” Plantible cofounder Tony Martens said. “Food companies need to add a lot of stabilizers to create the desired texture, and sugars, salts and fats to make it taste nice. They lack the nutrition animal-based counterparts have and use funky ingredients people have never really eaten in large volumes before.”
RuBisCO exists in all leafy greens, including kale and spinach, but in relatively low levels, Martens explained; growing lemna is more efficient. The larger duckweed family contains many species, each with many strains that have adapted to local conditions, yet the word “duckweed” tends to attract attention “because it sounds funky,” cofounder Maurits van de Ven said.
But it may prove more functional than funky. Doubling in mass every two days, lemna can be harvested daily, year-round on the company’s San Diego-based aquaponic farm. The growing process also recycles 95% of the water used.
Extraction of RuBisCO removes lemna’s grassy flavor, resulting in a natural, organic and allergen-free protein with a neutral taste, odor and color that behaves like egg whites. The ingredient can be used for meringues, gels and emulsions in many types of plant-based food and beverages; the company plans to sell it to manufacturers later in this year and launch in the first quarter of 2021.
The ingredient competes more on nutrition and functionality versus edible form factor, van de Ven said; for example, food tech company Eat JUST last month launched a new plant-based folded egg, adding to its lineup of vegan liquid scrambled egg and dressing products.
Longtime friends, Martens and van de Ven founded Plantible in 2018, with Martens leaving his career in agriculture commodity trading in favor of farming duckweed — an idea rooted in van de Ven’s graduate school thesis. To start, the company raised $500,000 (via the same investor group) and purchased an algae farm. To fuel its growth, Plantible in November hired Joe Boutelle, Soylent’s former VP of product development, who also spent years as a scientist for Land O’ Lakes and Kraft, to lead product development. Martens explained that plant-based meats, dairy and baking (heavily reliant on egg whites) all hold great potential for the ingredient. The company performed seven trials in various segments, with positive feedback from all of them, he said. Launching with a smaller company — like a sports nutrition brand with a shorter sales cycle — might make sense, Martens said, before expanding into big CPG brands seeking plant-based meat and dairy solutions.
“Working with smaller companies [who are] a little more agile in innovation makes a lot of sense from a go-to-market strategy,” Martens said. “Gradually growing alongside customers will allow us not to be heavily reliant on large multinational food companies.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., most of the team has been hunkered down on the duckweed farm to keep operations running smoothly. (Two offices became bedrooms, along with two RV’s.)
Plant-based products have gained steam during recent stockpiling, with research firm Nielsen finding fresh meat alternative sales grew 264.5% year-over-year for the eight-week period ending April 18. But it’s still too soon to determine if a substantial shift is happening, as plant-based remains a much smaller market than animal meat, Martens said.
One thing is clear: consumers are increasingly curious about clean ingredient decks, with industry experts predicting clean labels as an important aspect of plant-based foods in 2020. Since “Rubi protein” is abundant in nature, Plantible expects to receive generally recognized as safe (GRAS) notification from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with no issues. Other ingredients, such as soy leghemoglobin, which makes Impossible Foods’ meat ‘bleed,’ have caused concern from consumers and environmental groups, although deemed safe by the FDA and found in all living things, for also containing genetically modified yeast.