Melt&Marble enlarges operations with new HQ, sets sights on US
Melt&Marble, a Swedish precision fermentation company, has announced its move to a new headquarters in Gothenburg, featuring precision fermentation innovation facilities, including state-of-the-art molecular biology and microbiology labs, bioreactors up to pilot scale, and a food application test kitchen.
The facilities will accelerate development of Melt&Marble’s designer fat ingredients, marking an important milestone for the company’s commercialisation of more sustainable, delicious, and healthy fats.
Melt&Marble says it has now successfully scaled up the production process for its first product, a solid fat designed to replicate the properties of animal-derived fats for use in alternative meat products, to cubic metre bioreactor scale. This is a critical achievement on the path to commercial-scale production, and the company is now in the process of scaling further to tens of cubic metres.
‘’We are excited about the achievements to date’’, says Anastasia Krivoruchko, co-founder & CEO, ‘’In the last months, we constantly improved key performance indicators related to rate, titre and yield, successfully achieving metrics relevant for commercial-scale and demonstrating the scalability of our process,” Krivoruchko adds.
Furthering its path to market, the company has secured a partnership to bring them to commercial scale, allowing production of hundreds of kilograms of fat per batch in the coming months, with further expansion potential to tonnes per batch in 2025, when the company is eyeing a launch in the US market.
Chief business officer, Thomas Cresswell noted interest from industry players in its technology both in Europe and in the US, because it allows Melt&Marble to tune the composition and properties of its fats and create animal-free ingredients.
“Palatability remains a challenge in the animal-free food space and our fats are an extremely effective way to address that by replicating the taste experience consumers crave,” says Cresswell. “The recent milestones position us on the path to accelerate toward commercialization in the coming months and we are eyeing a market entry in the US as soon as early 2025. Our new facilities will allow us to test applications and produce samples in-house while our manufacturing partnership paves a clear path to market.’’
Melt&Marble’s technology enables precise control of its fats’ composition and properties, allowing it to create designer fats from the ground up. This means dictating the types of fatty acids as well as how these fatty acids assemble on to a glycerol backbone to form specific triglycerides. Beyond the food industry, Melt&Marble is exploring applications in other industries, including personal care, where demand for new sources of sustainable specialty fats has been increasing in recent years, driven by consumer demand.
