November 30, 2023

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Protein Industries Canada is one of five Global Innovation Clusters that since 2018 has invested or co-invested nearly CAD$500 million (US$368.50 million) in innovations relating to plant-based foods, feed, and ingredients. 

In February 2023, the initiative received an additional CAD$150 million (US$110.55 million) in funding and as its first investment through this second mandate, is backing a project that will see New School Foods, Liven Proteins, and NuWave Research combine their expertise to commercialize a whole-muscle cut of plant-based salmon that cooks from a raw state to cooked. As a first-of-its-kind offering to market, the product will give consumers an experience on par to the taste and texture of its seafood counterpart. 

New School Foods emerged from stealth in February 2023 with $12 million in Seed funding from high profile investors Lever VC, Blue Horizon, Hatch, Good Startup, Alwyn Capital, and Joyance Partners, backing its proprietary, scalable technologies for plant-based meat production, able to produce whole-cut fish alternatives that are on-par with animal-based counterparts. 

The aspect of whole-cut production has presented a complex challenge for the alternative meat industry – one involving texture, connective tissue, muscle fibers, and other macrostructures in animal proteins. 

And as whole-cuts account for the majority of meat sales in North America, these challenges are definitely worth resolving, despite their complexity. 

The established methods of alternative meat production have typically involved high-moisture extrusion – a process that uses high temperatures to pre-cook the food which denatures the proteins. However, New School Foods is taking a different approach. 

Founded in Toronto, Canada, in 2020, New School uses a series of cold-based processes that produce a “raw” product that transitions to being cooked – creating an entire process that more closely resembles the cooking experience of animal meat. 

“The next frontier of meat alternatives is whole cuts, and from day one we understood that New School Foods needed to solve two heavily connected issues: the quality of the meat alternatives in-market, and the limited toolkit our industry uses to produce them,” said Chris Bryson, CEO and founder, New School Foods in February. 

This project brings New School Foods together with Liven Proteins – an Ontario-based ingredients company offering animal-free, functional protein ingredients for food and nutrition that is currently focused on the production of animal-free collagen using precision fermentation to improve the nutrition and texture of plant-based foods and beverages – and NuWave Research, a British Columbia-based OEM company dedicated to providing industrial vacuum microwave solutions, or rapid-precision drying solutions that preserve product nutrition profile, color, and texture. 

Through this joint project, CAD$11.4 million (US$8.4 million) will be invested in R&D to help commercialize this revolutionary product – of this total, Protein Industries Canada is committing just over CAD$4.5 million (US$3.32 million), with the consortium partners investing the remainder. 

Building off of New School Foods’ and Liven Proteins’ first project, which validated the technology needed to formulate a full, muscle-cut salmon filet, this continuing project will focus on the scale up of production and retail sales of the market-ready product. 

“Building on the success of our previous project, which yielded a world-first whole-cut seafood alternative that looks, cooks, tastes and flakes like salmon, we are excited for this new project to bring this product to market,” said Chris Bryson, founder and CEO, New School Foods.

“In addition to optimizing our novel food processing technology with the support of our consortium partners, we’ll be building out our own production assembly line, providing a competitive advantage to fine-tune product quality and optimize costs so that we can create a plant-based alternative built for a wide audience.”

“Innovation is an ongoing process,” noted Bill Greuel, CEO, Protein Industries Canada. “It is the continual improvement of ideas, and the generating and stacking of IP to ultimately create a revolutionary product or service.”

“This project exemplifies the Global Innovation Cluster program and the benefits of collaborative innovation. By building off IP generated in the first project, and by bringing in new partners and their IP, new technology is being created, leading to a premier, commercial, first-to-market product.”

This project will also be highly conducive to the advancement of Liven Proteins and NuWave’s strategic growth, according to the two companies. 

“NuWave is excited to support Canadian innovation alongside our Protein Industry Canada partners. Utilizing out patented vacuum microwave technology, our team will help empower New School Foods to bring their product to the next stage of commercialization,” said Greg Stromotich, CEO of NuWave Research Inc.

Likewise, Fei Luo, co-founder and CEO at Liven Proteins, concluded, “Scalability and product-end applications are key to the success of Liven’s new ingredients, and this project addresses both components. We are excited to work with consortium partners and Protein Industries Canada to further hone precision fermentation as a tool kit for ingredient solutions to benefit Canada’s plant-based sector.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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