40 Alt-Protein Start-Ups Featured at New York’s Future Food-Tech Summit

New York, May 31, 2022 — Leading food technology event series, Future Food-Tech, today announced the 40 startups that will be participating in their Future Food-Tech Alternative Proteins summit taking place in New York on June 21-22. From emerging start-ups to moonshot companies, the summit aims to bring attendees closer to the CEOs and Founders of tomorrow’s solutions through novel food tastings, small group roundtable discussions, start-up pitching, a summit menu of new foods, the start-up exhibition, and inspiring panel discussions.

Celebrating the abundance of innovators at the event, Callum Alexander-Lindsay, the summit's Start-Up Partnerships Manager, said: “We are excited to showcase talent from around the world and spotlight breakthrough technologies that can tackle the global challenges of food insecurity, climate change and sustainable nutrition.”

Early-Stage Start-Up Showcase:

Cella Farms uses breakthrough technologies to transform agricultural crops into complete nutritional products for consumers.

New School Foods focuses on whole-muscle seafood, made from plants.

Pleese Foods created a revolutionary plant-based cheese developed by New Yorkers to melt perfectly on pizza and comfort foods. Its cheese is made from all natural ingredients including bean and potato proteins and crafted using traditional methods without and dairy, soy, nuts, gluten or GMOs.

Profuse Technology develops supplements for cultivated meat media that reduces the cost of producing the media by 40%, through increasing the produced meat mass and shortenings the production time.

SeaSpire is developing fresh, whole-muscle seafood alternatives with clean label plant and synthetic biology biomass coupled with proprietary additive manufacturing technology

Sudhin Biopharma uses high intensity cell culture and harvesting technologies via BioSettlers to achieve and maintain high cell densities and viabilities.

Synonym has created a financing and implementation platform to rapidly build commercial-scale biomanufacturing facilities, allowing next generation animal proteins, materials and energy to become a part of the global supply chain.

Vertage combines deep culinary expertise with breakthrough ingredient technologies to create cultured and fermented cheese that delivers excellent taste, superior nutrition, and great value.

Wanda Fish Technologies has developed a disruptive platform that produces delicious, nutritious cultivated whole-cut fillets using native fish fat and muscle cells.

Novel Food Experiences

At the summit’s Taste Lab, the founders of novel foods and technologies will host small intimate sessions for delegates to try new products. These include Bee-io’s cultivated honeys featured in sweet treats, Brevel’s novel microalgae-based alternative proteins, v2food’s fennel and cranberry plant-based sausage rolls and Thimus’s new hardware and software platform for quick evaluation of human response to food experiences.

Food-tech experiences extend throughout the summit menu as Zero Egg serves its plant-based egg for breakfast; PiP International debuts its Ultimate Pea Protein (UP.P™); Meati Foods serves Meati Chicken shawarma pita and grilled za’atar Meati Steak and vegetable kabobs; and Nowadays serves up wholesome plant-based fried chicken made with just a handful of simple ingredients.

Additional highlights and tasting experiences on the menu include: Eclipse Foods’s plant-based ice cream, Brave Robot ice cream, ENOUGH chicken, Beyond Meat, Triton Algae Innovations’s algae-based dumplings, TNUVA Alternative plant-based drinks and cheese.

Founders and CEOs Take to the Summit Stage

To kickstart the summit, the inspirational CEOs of Air Protein, NotCo, The EVERY Company and Nature’s Fynd share their rapid growth and success with the audience to pave the way for fruitful partnerships and open dialogue across the three pillars of plant-based, fermentation and cell-culturing technologies.

PLANT-BASED

A Breakfast Briefing at the summit hosted by Protein Industries Canada invites delegates to learn about the collaborative food-tech ecosystem in Canada with case studies from plant-based Presidents and Founders, Jasmine Bryne (Big Mountain Foods) Chris Bryson (New School Foods) and Blair Bullus (Wamame Foods).

Innovators will also discuss the role of plant-based in the evolving alternative protein landscape as Michael Leonards (Motif FoodWorks) delivers a keynote on plant-based food science and design and Nick Hazell (v2food) reveals what’s holding plant-based back from amazing taste and texture. Žiga Vraničar (Narayan Foods) challenges opinions in the audience debate: ‘Will Plant-Based Become Irrelevant?’, before Aylon Steinhart (Eclipse Foods) and Miller Tran (Triton Algae Innovations) weigh in on what the future of protein will look like in 2050.

As consumer adoption of plant-based proteins grows, Yonatan Golan (Brevel) and Chris Theal (PhytoOrganix) take part in the panel discussion around plant sourcing and its impact on carbon, nutrition and biodiversity, and Taly Nechushtan (Innovopro) joins Ingredion on a fireside chat around the versatility of chickpeas.

"The next-gen of global consumers demand sustainable, clean label products, and the market is searching for tastier, nutritious, and more sustainable plant-based solutions to address this. In the coming years, InnovoPro intends to significantly increase its growth to build a global chickpea-based ingredient platform to inspire our wellness-focused consumers," reveals Taly Nechushtan, CEO, InnovoPro.

FERMENTATION

Julian Melchiorri (Arborea), Laura Katz (Helaina) and David Brandes (Planetary) will discuss how increased capacity and reduced downstream costs enable fermentation scale-up to meet demand.

Aviv Wolff (Remilk) and Matt Gibson (New Culture) will share how they are using precision fermentation to rethink the way we produce and formulate animal-free dairy, meanwhile Gaston Paladini (Moolec Science) reveals its technology’s potential to improve all aspects of meat alternatives.

"Since precision fermentation yields ingredients that enable the production of end-products that are identical in taste and texture, healthy, and cost-effective, it will be a central player in facilitating a consumer shift away from traditional animal-based foods," says Aviv Wolff, Co-Founder & CEO, Remilk.

CELL CULTURED

Lou Cooperhouse (BlueNalu) and Guy Michrowski (ProFuse Technology) will weigh in on scaling cultured fish and meat through partnerships, as Nurit Argov (Wilk) presents how cell cultured breast milk has potential benefits for infant nutrition.

“The Future Food-Tech Alternative Proteins Summit showcases companies, products and opportunities, while inspiring collaborations and partnerships, so that new age innovators and legacy corporations alike can create meaningful impact through delicious products for consumers worldwide," shares Lou Cooperhouse, Co-Founder, President & CEO, BlueNalu.

Hundreds of food-tech pioneers will meet at Future Food-Tech Alternative Proteins in New York (and online) on June 21-22. The summit brings together investors, food brands, retailers, ingredient manufacturers and technology providers for two days of high impact networking and knowledge exchange to accelerate technologies across the alternative protein supply chain.

The full program, speaking faculty and delegate registration are available now at www.futurefoodtechprotein.com