Project Eaden—a Berlin-based startup deploying fiber spinning and compounding technology to create “ultra-realistic” meat alternatives—has raised a €15 million ($15.6 million) Series A round.
The round, which takes Project Eaden’s cumulative funding to €27 million ($28.1 million), was backed by climate tech fund Planet A, retail giant REWE Group, DeepTech & Climate Fonds, Happiness Capital, and AgriFoodTech Venture Alliance along with returning investors Foodlabs and Creandum.
The funding will help the firm scale up manufacturing and support the launch of plant-based ham at 2,000 REWE stores in Germany in mid-2025.
It will also support R&D work to develop additional products such as bacon, pork loins and beef steaks, says the firm, which does not face regulatory hurdles to get its goods to market, unlike some players in the biomass fermentation or cell ag space.
“Research suggests that plant-based products could replace 11–22% of global meat consumption by 2035—but only if improvements are made in taste and texture. Project Eaden is leading this shift with its new fiber technology, which delivers a meat alternative that will appeal even to the most skeptical consumers.” Christoph Gras, General Partner, Planet A
Texturizing plant-based meat
Founded in 2022 by Jan Wilmking, an exec at online fashion and lifestyle retailer Zalando, and textile engineer Dr. David Schmelzeisen, Project Eaden deploys a proprietary fiber spinning and compounding technique that Wilmking claims is cost-effective, scalable, and capable of producing whole cuts with an “ultra-realistic” taste and texture.
He told AgFunderNews: “Fiber spinning can be done in multiple different ways. We initially tried wet spinning, where you take a protein solution with a coagulant, you put it through a spinneret [a metal nozzle with holes that looks a bit like a showerhead to create fibers], and then you put it into a solution with, say, salt and alginate, they react and form a structure.”
But this “doesn’t really work” for creating realistic alt-meat, he said, noting that the fibers “are like water hoses in a garden” in that you can push two hoses together, but they don’t bind to each other in the way that meat fibers do and will “never really have the same mechanical properties.”
With this in mind, Project Eaden developed a novel spinning process using proteins such as wheat, pea, and fava bean proteins that also involves a spinneret to produce fibers in multiple shapes and sizes with different properties, coupled with proprietary compounding tech that ensures the proteins “get solidified in a certain shape.” Fats can be added at different stages and incorporated in multiple ways (layered between muscle strands, concentrated in islands, or as part of the “meat juice”).
Many plant proteins, he noted, are globular (spherical), whereas animal muscle fibers are fibrillar (long and stringy), “So we need to unfold them before putting them together in a shape and solidifying that.”
While high moisture extrusion also denatures plant protein to make it behave more like animal protein, he acknowledged, this generates a “mono-material” whereas fiber spinning “allows us to create different types of materials, and fiber compounding allows us to connect those materials in all kinds of different ways” into a compound material.
According to Wilmking, the tech is “highly scalable” and more cost effective than 3D printing.
“Our fibers are far stronger than something you can print and have very different mechanical properties. And then if you look at the speed and the sheer quantity that we can do… there’s no comparison. We also do not need hydrocolloids.”
Manufacturing and scale up
The initial plan is to keep manufacturing in-house using the firm’s proprietary technology, which is covered by three pending patents, said Wilmking. However, non-proprietary steps such as slicing and packing can be outsourced.
“We have an interest in growing fast, but this needs to be balanced with quality and process control. But going forward, we can very well imagine black boxing parts of our technology and entering into license agreements. But this is not going to happen in the next one to two years.”
As for the equipment, he said, the startup is using a mix of modified off-the-shelf kit and proprietary kit at its plant, where it currently operates two machines, each capable of producing around 200 kilos a day. Armed with fresh funding, it is now rapidly scaling up.
The technology can be scaled up or out, he said. “If you look into the world of fiber spinning, there are some gigantic machines out there.”
While Project Eaden is initially focusing on ham, it is also working on other products from sausages and pork loins to beef steaks, said Wilmking, who said the tech is “highly customizable” enabling fibers of multiple widths and strengths, as you might see in animal flesh. “Some parts are chewy, some are tender, some are elastic, some are thin, some are thick…”
REWE: ‘Game-changing’ technology to bring plant-based meats to the mainstream
Clément Tischer, head of foodtech at REWE Group, told AgFunderNews that the plant-based meat category is “dynamic and consistently growing” in Germany, where the retailer has established “dedicated shelf spaces and layouts in all our stores making plant-based products easy to find.”
The quality of the products has also “improved significantly in recent years, with advances in taste, texture, and nutritional value making them appeal to a wider audience,” he claimed.
Asked what impressed REWE about Project Eaden, he said that its products had “an unprecedented meat-like texture and mouthfeel” but noted that “what truly sets it apart is the scalability and cost efficiency of its technology.”
He added: “Its ability to produce price-competitive products while delivering consistently high-quality products is a game-changer, allowing plant-based alternatives to compete not just as niche products but as mainstream protein options.”
Whole cuts
While most meat alternatives are processed products such as burgers, sausages, and grounds, multiple startups have sprung up in recent years attempting to produce whole cuts via a variety of approaches from solid state fermentation to shear cell technology.
Key players include Netherlands-based Rival Foods; Switzerland-based Planted; Israel-based Chunk Foods; Indonesia-based Green Rebel Foods; Slovenia-based Juicy Marbles [disclosure: AgFunderNews’ parent co AgFunder is an investor]; US-based Tender Food, Offbeast [formerly Mooji Meats, another AgFunder portco], MyForest Foods, and Meati Foods; France-based SWAP (formerly Umiami); and Spain-based Novameat.
Professor Yaakov Nahmias, best-known in the foodtech world for founding cultivated meat company Believer Meats, has also hit the headlines in recent weeks with the publication of a paper outlining a novel approach to creating whole cuts using injection molding and metamaterials.
Further reading:
Rival Foods ramps up ‘shear cell’ texturizing tech for plant-based whole cuts
Swiss startup Planted rolls out ‘first of its kind’ fermented plant-based steak
Read the orginal article: https://agfundernews.com/project-eaden-raises-15-6m-series-a-to-launch-ultra-realistic-plant-based-meat-using-fiber-spinning-tech
