It is Woolworths second investment in plant-based meats, having invested in ingredient maker Harvest B, which develops alternative proteins for use by other brands.
precision fermentation
In addition to plant-based meat, All G Foods is believed to be the first local company to use a process known as precision fermentation to develop dairy proteins that can be used to create products that look and taste just like milk, but without the cows or associated negative environmental effects.
Precision fermentation allows the programming of microorganisms to produce complex organic molecules, such as proteins.
Milk is made up of approximately 96% water, 3.5% protein and 0.5% fat. The entire G Foods process replicates the proteins that are responsible for the product’s taste and appearance, but uses a fraction of the water and land for production. It is also lactose free.
The company now makes its experimental non-cow’s milk product at its biosmelter in Sydney, but Pacas said there were plans to ramp up production in the coming years.
“We are still a long way from producing it at scale because there are regulatory and scalability challenges to overcome,” he said. The Australian Financial Review.
Jan Pacas secured one of the largest seed funding rounds in the country for All G Foods.
“In 12 to 18 months we will build a pilot plant. And in two or three years, and we are already in talks with state governments about this, we will build a large precision fermentation plant that we can scale to supply products to the world.”
Woolworths created its venture arm, W23, in 2019 to help the supermarket gain exposure to innovations and technologies. It has also backed Marketplacer, Samsara, and digital health tech company Eucalyptus.
“There is great appeal to working with Woolies because they are an innovative company with strong distribution capabilities,” said Mr. Pacas. They are the dream couple.
Other All G Foods investors from last year’s seed round include Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Ellerston Capital, Singapore-based private equity firm Triple Star Capital, Our Innovation Fund founders David Shein and Geoff Levi, Monash Capital and Andrews Meats CEO Peter Andrews.
All G’s Love Buds Burgers are stocked at over 300 outlets.
It is also developing plant-based chicken, ground beef, sausage, nuggets and bacon alternatives as part of its first batch of products, which will launch in stores in the coming months.
“I want to make this bigger than A2 Milk was in its heyday,” Pacas said.
“If you take a decade-long perspective, (the alternative protein market) will be 20 to 30 times larger.
“But we are not positioning ourselves against meat. We are running out of land and without cows. The world needs to produce more food in the next 30 years than in all of human history.”
