The Israel Innovation Authority has seleced YDLabs, a food tech fermentation R&D center, to establish permanent microorganism fermentation labs for the food industry. 

The Authority will invest up to 50 million NIS (New Israel Shekel) (US$13.8 million) in infrastructure to serve all food tech companies using fermentation for research, development, and production of their products.

Tapping into alt-protein demands
YDLabs will establish a facility that will provide fermentation services to food tech companies at varying scales, ranging from ten liters to 20,000 liters, offering diverse services based on the current and future needs of the local food tech industry, subject to predefined conditions set by the research committee. 

The company was founded a year ago by Ariel Blumovich and recruited one of Israel’s renowned fermentation experts, Dr. Moti Rebhun, who also serves as the CEO of the Israel Fermentation Society. 

“We are pleased to confirm the selecion of YDLabs and look forward to seeing the Israeli ecosystem benefit from infrastructure and services provided for scaling production to enable economic feasibility assessment, regulatory preparedness and more,” says Dror Bin, CEO of the Israel Innovation Authority. 

“Israel has identified the food tech field as one of the areas to prioritize. Due to the lack of infrastructure and workforce, many ventures turn to service providers abroad, leading to early knowledge leakage and advancements in regulatory frameworks tailored for other countries. With this initiative, we aim to change that as soon as possible.”

The space gathers speed
The field of alternative proteins has experienced significant growth in recent years and is expected to continue its high growth trajectory in the coming years. 

The main motivations driving and accelerating the development of technologies and products in this field primarily stem from concerns about environmental and climate impacts of increasing demand for animal-based and industrial agriculture-based food as part of the expected population growth, as well as fears of food supply security and its effect on the climate crisis. 

To answer this need, there has been a significant growth of the alternative protein sector (including non-protein food components) using synthetic biology methods that employ engineered microorganisms as production systems (food coloring, structurally animal-like fats, enzymes for food production, flavor and aroma compounds, and more). 

The field of alternative proteins can be divided into three main categories: 

• Plant-based meat and dairy substitutes 
• Cultured meat and dairy substitutes 
• Proteins and various components derived from microorganisms through fermentation 

Fermentation in the spotlight
Among these three categories, fermentation technology for food production is emerging as an up-and-coming market. 

The fermentation facility will include equipment, human resources specialized in food fermentation, services enabling fermentation at pilot and demo scales, separation and purification services, analytics, assistance in food regulation and more. 

This will enable infrastructure customers from Israel and worldwide to conduct fermentation at various volumes, conduct economic feasibility experiments, produce small-scale batches for potential customers, establish a regulatory dossier and create small trading batches. 

From a broader perspective, this will preserve the vast knowledge in Israel currently and encourage companies to move from the development stage to production.

In similar developments earlier this month, GEA opened a Food Application and Technology Center of Excellence (ATC) in Germany, slated as a central hub for piloting processes and products for the alternative protein industry. This comes amid a growing shift to plant-based foods and the burgeoning cultivated meat sector.

GEA says the research focus is turning to precision fermentation for milk proteins. One of GEA’s initial customers in this field is a scale-up from Israel called Imagindairy. 

Earlier this year, key players in the precision fermentation space formed Food Fermentation Europe, a unio championing precision fermentation as the “key to a sustainable food framework.” 

Imagindairy is part of the collaboration. You can read more on this here.