A newcomer is looking to get a cut of the increasingly trendy faux meat market.
An Israel-based startup — aptly named Redefine Meat — is hyping high-tech printers that produce plant-based steaks that look eerily like real beef. The company, located south of Tel Aviv in Rehovot, will test-market its “Alt-Steak” at high-end restaurants this year before rolling out its industrial-scale 3-D printers to meat distributors in 2021.
“You need a 3-D printer to mimic the structure of the muscle of the animal,” Redefine Meat CEO Eshchar Ben-Shitrit tells Reuters. The machines will be able to print about 44 pounds per hour to start, and eventually hundreds, at a lower cost than real meat, Ben-Shitrit says.
In a video documenting the process, a trio of tubes can be seen separately squeezing out the three plant-based ingredients: “Fat, blood and muscle,” which combine to construct the final printed product.
Founded in 2018, the company raised $6 million last year in a push led by CPT Capital, an investor in plant-based protein pioneers Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. Hanaco Venture Capital and German poultry group PHW also invested startup funds.
Meat substitutes are all the rage with eaters who are concerned about animal welfare and the environment. And it’s prime time for the 3-D push, as both Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have reported a spike in sales as the coronavirus takes a serious toll on the world’s meat supply
A 141% surge in first-quarter revenue and profits “exceeded our expectations despite an increasingly challenging operating environment due to the COVID-19 health crisis,” Beyond Meat Chief Executive Ethan Brown said in statement.
But can Redefine Meat live up to its name?
“The market is definitely waiting for a breakthrough in terms of improving the texture,” Stacy Pyett, who manages the Proteins for Life program at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, tells Reuters.
While 3-D printing is one technology competing to improve the mouthfeel of mystery meat, Pyett pointed out that “having new technologies . . . doesn’t necessarily solve the flavor and taste problem.”
Still, alternative meat sales could reach $140 billion by 2029, tapping about 10% of the world meat market, according to Barclays analysts. Spanish competitor Novameat is also working on 3-D-printed plant meat, including a whole-muscle pork cut developed during the coronavirus crisis which disrupted pork supply.
“Our technology will be available in selected top restaurants in Europe this year, before we focus on scaling it up during 2021,” Novameat CEO Giuseppe Scionti said in a statement.
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