A golden future for natural egg white replacers [Interview]

“The 2 co-founders of FUMI Ingredients met at Wageningen University, at the bioprocess engineering department. We performed 4 years of research on the valorisation of microalgae, with a specific focus on functional proteins. We figured that the fundamental science we were working on would be translatable to an interesting business case.”

“Initially when we were measuring the ingredient technical functionalities, we wanted to compare our extract with animal-based ingredient functionalities. To our surprise, we saw that our ingredient was performing very comparable to egg whites. Egg whites have a large environmental footprint and it is considered the ‘king of ingredients’ due to its superior functionalities. The moment we therefore realised that we had an egg white replacer in our hands, we knew we could build a company upon this.”

“We use a smart combination of process technologies, deep knowledge on protein functionalities, as well as a lot of knowledge on microbial cell physiology to develop scalable processes. We don't use solvents, extreme temperatures or GMOs which make the process rather scalable. Additionally, we are working with natural yeast sources which are abundantly available and ensures all-year-round production of our raw materials.”

“The name is still tentative, as we need to take some legislative food labelling aspects into account. However, we intend to call the egg white replacer ‘natural yeast protein.’”

“As a matter of fact, we are! We are launching an ingredient that is rich in fibres which we intend to launch as ‘natural yeast fibre.’”

“We intend to expand the portfolio of ingredients. We believe our technology is more widely applicable than just yeast. The next micro-organisms that we will tackle could be micro-algae, fungi and/or bacteria. We are evaluating this at the moment.”

“The demand for egg white replacers is going through the roof and I don't think this plant-based trend is going anywhere, either. In 5 years’ time, I think 25-50% of food products in the supermarkets will have ditched egg whites, moving towards recipes that don't require this ingredient anymore.”