Nourish Ingredients partners with Chinese manufacturer to scale animal-free fats
The company's "vegan animal fat" aims to give plant-based meat authentic taste and texture. Backed by Hostplus and Main Sequence, it’s now thinking global.
As it begins raising an extension to its $45 million Series A, Nourish Ingredients has secured a deal to manufacture its animal-free fat product at scale in China.
Wuhan-based CABIO Biotech, a listed producer of experimental health foods, will manufacture the product for distribution in the US, Europe and Australia. Founder James Petrie hopes the partnership will also provide an entry point into China’s enormous market.
“China is going to do what China does,” said Petrie of the country's byzantine regulatory environment. “China is an interesting market in terms of its size, obviously, but it's very hard for Western countries to successfully penetrate. We took the decision that we need a strong Chinese partner in order to help us do that.”
Nourish Ingredients is part of Australia’s growing synthetic biology industry, which the CSIRO estimates could be worth $30 billion by 2040. Its “animal-free fat” product, named Tastilux, is made by extracting biomass from a specific strain of fungus.
