Dutch food ingredient startup Vivici has received €32.5 million ($34 million) in funding to scale up its production of alternative dairy proteins, it said.
The company makes a dairy protein through a process called 'precision fermentation', a refined form of brewing, through which microbes are multiplied to create animal proteins or specific enzymes.
Vivici expects demand for alternative proteins to be driven by food production companies' need to cut greenhouse gas emissions and their desire to make supply less vulnerable to seasonal agriculture swings.
"The whey protein market, which is our closest proxy, that's a $13 billion market already," Vivici CEO Stephan van Sint Fiet told Reuters.
"We're operating in an enormous market. From our perspective, the potential is definitely in the hundreds of millions."
Investment
The investment was led by the Netherlands' largest pension fund ABP and the Dutch government's investment fund Invest-NL, while existing shareholders DSM-Firmenich and Fonterra also took part.
Vivici did not disclose the individual amounts invested by each party or the total valuation of the company.
The funding will be used to launch a new product, to access new international markets and to establish long-term manufacturing capabilities, it said.
Vivici said it has recently signed supply agreements with several food producers for its first product, which was launched last year in the United States.
"The protein is identical to what comes out of milk, but it is made in a much more environmentally friendly process that requires a fraction of the water, energy, and land," van Sint Fiet said.
"It's real dairy made without the animal."
