Future Food Quick Bites: Oatly Railways, Brain Bar & Cultivated Meat Regulation
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Oatly’s partnership with Dutch Railways, Finless Foods’ crowdfunding round, and Gosh!’s Mad About Veg campaign.
New products and launches
Swedish non-dairy giant Oatly has partnered with NS Retail to become the exclusive oat milk partner at Julia’s, StationsHuiskamer, and select kiosks at railway stations across the Netherlands.
UK whole-food plant-based brand Gosh! has kickstarted its latest marketing campaign, Mad About Veg, designed to put vegetables front and centre as an extension of its ’plant points’ labelling strategy.
British nutrition brand Indi has introduced a Brain Bar, which combines 16 plant-based ingredients with vitamins, minerals and over 6g of fibre. The cognitive-health-focused snack is available on its own website and Ocado for £2.20 per 25g bar.
Also in the UK, dairy-free startup The Coconut Collab has rolled out an additive-free coconut cream SKU online at Ocado and Amazon.
Finnish startup Perfat Technologies, which makes sunflower-oil-based oleogels to replace butter and palm oil, has signed a distribution agreement with Eigenmann & Veronelli to sell its Perfat Soft fat in Italy and Turkey.
Ahead of its upcoming launch of whole-cut plant-based meat brand Perfecta in the US, Israel’s Steakholder Foods has signed a deal with KeHE Distributors. It will roll out chicken, steaks and seafood products in the Northeast first.
Speaking of expanded distribution, Beyond Meat has landed an agreement to stock its whole-cut mycelium steak filet at Meijer this month, following a launch at Wegmans and H-E-B last month.
US company Natural Food & Beverage has launched Ashoora, a shelf-stable, ready-to-eat plant-based pudding. They’re available in original, Madagascan vanilla, cinnamon spice, and tropical coconut flavours.
Elmhurst 1925, known for its extensive range of non-dairy milks and creamers, has entered a new beverage category with the launch of Good Day, Darling, an oat-based spritz with 4.1% ABV. It comes in blueberry-lemon and strawberry-lychee flavours.
And Californian alternative fat startup Savor has expanded its partnership with San Francisco’s Jane the Bakery, which has introduced an apple coffee cake muffin using its carbon-derived EcoButter.
Company, finance and policy developments
Californian cultivated seafood firm Finless Foods has kickstarted a crowdfunding round on Republic, seeking $75,000 as it awaits approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for its sashimi-grade bluefin tuna.
French cultivated meat startup Parima’s regulatory application with Food Standards Australia New Zealand has entered the public consultation phase, with submissions accepted until July 22. That represents a delay from the regulator’s original March timeline for this phase.
Israeli biotech firm ProFuse Technology has raised $1.5M to expand into horizons beyond cultivated meat media supplements by becoming a muscle health discovery platform amid the rise of GLP-1 use.
French firm Edonia, which turns green spirulina into a beef mince alternative, has been awarded $10,000 after winning the Food & Beverage Innovation Competition by the French American Chamber of Commerce in New York.
Danish microalgae startup Algiecell has appointed former Topsoe executive Mette Ingeman Pedersen as CFO and former Siemens Wind Power executive Tove Feld to its board of directors.
Finally, Vegan Events UK is hosting the South Wales Vegan Festival in Cardiff on Saturday, September 5, with standard entry tickets priced at £5.
Check out last week’s Future Food Quick Bites.