Planetarians Raises $6M to Upscale Vegan Meat From Upcycled Ingredients

The food technology firm has backed seven years in R&D to develop a sustainable, low cost alternative to meat made only from two upcycled components : oil cakes and brewer’s yeast. The pulled in funds will be used to build a pilot facility capable of producing tons of vegan blocks per year and move to a commercial production phase. Mindrock led the backing round, joined by Traction Fund, Techstars, SOSV, and AB InBev, the business behind some of the world’s largest beer brands. Planetarians brewers’ yeast supplier, committed to recycling barley and yeast from its brewing process . © Planetarians Upcycling ingredients In 2013, Aleh Manchuliantsau and Max Barnthouse founded Planetarians in San Francisco as a nutritional drink business. But in 2015, surprised by the waste produced by the sunflower oil industry, they decided to upcycle sunflower cakes into nutritious chips and then pasta.

In 2019, they kicked off using solid-state fermentation to make burger patties, but the process required a huge CapEx. T hat same year, the business won the AgFunder Innovation Award and scored investments from Barilla’s venture arm Blue1877 and Amadori. The firm has been turning its clean-label meat blocks into consumer-ready vegan ribs called Planet Ribs, in order to showcase the product’s versatility and test its marketplace viability.

Going to Planetarians, its goal is to produce at large scale and through B2B takings replace animal meat in the food service sector . Hotels, restaurants, and schools have expressed interest in serving these products, and the first commercial contract has been secured, states Planetarians.

Planetarians’ sustainable vegan meat blocks and the company’s tech have received patent approval from USPTO in 2022. “If we use whole ingredients with all nutrients and minimal processing, we’ll make food healthy for us and the planet,” states Aleh Manchuliantsau on the company’s website.