Solar Foods is advancing VTT and LUT research as the basis for a wheat flour-like food protein product fermented using water, electricity and CO2.
Solar Foods, a Finland-based food protein developer based on research from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), has received €2m ($2.5m) in a round backed by VTT Ventures, the investment arm of VTT.
The round, led by venture firm Lifeline Ventures, also featured LUT-founded cleantech seed fund Green Campus Innovations.
Founded in 2017, Solar Foods is commercialising a single-cell food protein that can be fermented using a combination of water, electricity and CO2 to create an end-product with a taste and texture likened to wheat flour.
Solar Foods will begin trial production of the protein later in 2019 and could be ready to start commercial manufacturing next year, in the hope of securing market adoption of the product for its robustness against agricultural, meteorological and climate fluctuations.
Juha Lindfors, partner at Lifeline Ventures, said: “Solar Foods will take the environmental requirements of food production to an entirely new level, and can do it in a way that is competitive in terms of cost and can be sized to a large scale
