The latest agreement is expected to secure a food-grade supply chain to support commercialisation requirements
BlueNalu, a global leader in the development of cell-cultured seafood, announced the signing of a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Nutreco, a global leader in animal nutrition and aquafeed. Building on the success of earlier collaborations, this agreement represents a joint interest in the establishment and scale-up of a food-grade supply chain for cell-cultured seafood manufacturing.
This LOI constitutes the third agreement between the two companies, which originated in December 2019, and coincided with the participation of Nutreco in the Series A round financing of BlueNalu. This next stage of the companies’ partnership marks the beginning of Nutreco’s food-grade supply chain infrastructure development in parallel to BlueNalu’s production phases, from pilot scale development to regulatory stages, and its subsequent commercialisation activities. This collaboration includes an initial phase in which BlueNalu and Nutreco will join forces to bring down the costs of cell feed and establish specifications and metrics for certain raw materials necessary to produce BlueNalu’s proprietary cell-cultured seafood products. Importantly, these specifications must be in accordance with food-grade regulatory requirements for nations in which BlueNalu plans to market its products.
“Our vision to create a healthy, secure and sustainable protein solution with cell-cultured seafood, starts by solving several key challenge areas, which include the shift from a pharma-grade to food-grade ingredient supply,” said Lou Cooperhouse, co-founder, president and CEO at BlueNalu.
“At Nutreco, it is our purpose to feed the growing global population in a safe and sustainable way, and we understand the important role cell-cultured proteins can play in addressing this global challenge,” said Joost Matthijssen, Chief Strategy Officer at Nutreco. “That is why we are pleased to invest further to support BlueNalu’s ongoing development and commercialisation efforts and the cell-cultured industry at large.”
This agreement complements BlueNalu’s prior announcement regarding its large-scale commercialization plans, and its business differentiation with whole muscle product forms; a non-GMO, single-cell suspension line; and proprietary lipid-loading technology that allows for continuous production.