Perfat Technologies Unveils High-Fibre Solid Fat Alternative from Sunflower Seeds

Finnish food tech startup Perfat Technologies has launched Perfat Soft, a sunflower-oil-based oleogel that can replace butter and palm oil across a range of applications.

Entering the flourishing fat-alternative space, Helsinki-based Perfat Technologies has announced the launch of the first innovation developed from its oleogel technology.

The startup has introduced Perfat Soft, a solid fat that can replace butter, palm oil, and coconut oil with the same functionality and dramatically lower saturated fat content.

Its oleogelation process turns liquid vegetable oils – sunflower oil, in this case – into these gel-like fats, and incorporates fibre into the mix as a bonus.

“The base ingredient is high-oleic sunflower oil. Other ingredients are soluble corn fibre, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids and natural antioxidants,” Perfat co-founder and CEO Jyrki Lee-Korhonen tells Green Queen.

The launch comes a year after the startup secured €2.5M in a Series A funding round to scale up production of its innovative fat solutions and bring them to market.

A plant-based fat high in fibre and low in saturated fat

Founded in 2023 by Lee-Korhonen and CTO Fabio Valoppi, Perfat is leveraging oleogelation to produce its healthier, sustainable fat alternatives.

Experts recognise oleogels as an alternative fat with major potential. The process combines oil with gelators to form solid structures, giving liquid oils some of the functional attributes of saturated fats, without all the health issues.

However, low availability of food-grade gelators and certain regulatory restrictions around their use have impeded efforts to produce them at a commercial scale. Perfat applies material physics principles to food science to solve this bottleneck and deliver what it says is “unlike anything else on the market”.

“We can use any healthy vegetable oil and give it a solid fat structure. Oleogel technology allows trapping of oil within a matrix, and we have taken oleogels to the next level by using dietary fibre as a co-structurant,” explains Lee-Korhonen.

Distinguishing the company’s innovation from other fat alternatives, he highlights Perfat Soft’s nutritional attributes. The sunflower-seed-based fat contains 34g of fibre per 100g, compared to zero for other fats.

Most people in the West are deficient in fibre, a macronutrient that is crucial for gut wellness and overall wellbeing. Consumers are increasingly looking to add more fibre to their diets, driven by trends like fibermaxxing and the rise of weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, since fibre can trigger the body’s natural GLP-1 response.

Perfat’s fat has 616 calories per 100g, 14% lower than butter and 30% lower than palm oil. “Our fat is not 100% oil or fat,” Lee-Korhonen points out, noting that the high amount of “has a significantly lower caloric content than oil or fat”.

Meanwhile, saturated and trans fats raise LDL (or bad) cholesterol in your blood and are the primary dietary drivers of heart disease, the leading cause of death in countries like the US. Perfat Soft contains zero trans fat and just 11.7g of saturated fat per 100g, over 75% lower than butter and palm oil, respectively.

These advantages enable manufacturers to formulate better-for-you, indulgent products with healthier fats that come with the added benefits of fibre.

Perfat Technologies teases impending launch of solid fat alternative

Perfat Soft has the functionality to work across a broad range of applications, including baked goods like cookies, pound cakes and sugar-based fillings, confectionery products such as chocolate spreads, and dairy and meat alternatives.

In the plant-based dairy space, it can help deliver a creamy texture and a stable structure for ice cream, with a 71% reduction in saturated fat compared to a version made with conventional cream. In addition, this fat can create structure, juiciness, and mouthfeel in vegan meat analogues.

“The first version of Perfat Soft is targeted at various bakery applications, including cakes, bars, biscuits, etc.,” says Lee-Korhonen, adding that the firm is already co-developing products with unnamed food companies.

Aside from the nutritional and functional credentials, this oleogel also runs high on sustainability, generating just 1.7kg of CO2e per kg of product. This is 83% lower than dairy butter and 77% smaller than palm oil.

“Furthermore, unlike many other alternative fats, our fat is not a novel food, so we don’t need any novel food approvals in Europe,” Lee-Korhonen outlines, revealing that the first products using Perfat Soft are set to be launched either in late 2026 or early 2027.

The firm has raised around €7M ($7.9M) to date, most of which is equity funding. Further, it secured financing from the EU-backed EIT Food accelerator, and was separately part of its RisingFoodStars programme last year.

“We have outsourced all our production,” the CEO says. “We have [the] capacity to supply more than a thousand metric tonnes per year.”

AI protein discovery platform Shiru has also launched an oleogel-based fat combining unsaturated oils with plant proteins. And Time-Travelling Milkman raised €2M ($2.3M) to launch its dairy fat substitute, which leverages naturally occurring oleosomes in sunflower seeds. These are microdroplets for oil storage, surrounded by phospholipids and proteins to stabilise the oil during emulsification.