Plant-Based Foods: Time to Put Yourself in Prime Position
High interest rates and inflation have put pressure on plant-based foods and animal-free protein manufacturers to optimize development and production. Sartorius is here to help you get to market quicker and more cost-effectively.
This article is posted on our Science Snippets Blog
Over the past few years, the plant-based food industry has experienced ups and downs. The global market for alternative protein products continues to grow, but perhaps not as fast as expected or desired. However, this is primarily due to outside factors, such as interest rates and inflation. These conditions make it more difficult for food companies and brands to invest and expand and for consumers to pay for more expensive, non-subsidized protein alternatives.
Despite these and other challenges, such as the continued need to improve consumer understanding and close the price and taste gaps with traditional foods, the industry has a bright future. As the Good Food Institute asserts in its State of the Industry Report: Plant-based meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy, “The industry continues to mature. New scientific and technical groundwork was laid. Companies conducted analyses that proved out sustainability benefits of plant-based products. Governments and investors financed researchers and companies. And manufacturers introduced new products, developed strategic partnerships, and built new production facilities.”
That commercial activity is still vibrant, with the leading players maintaining or increasing their efforts. From the innovators and disruptors like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Quorn, Oatly, etc., to the more traditional food companies like Nestlé, Unilever, Danone, Kellogg’s, and Tyson Foods, who see the strategic need and compelling value of adding alternative foods to their offering. Whether as innovators or early adopters and converts, there is every sign that these companies and brands will continue to lead the way, face up to the industry challenges, and help bring plant-based foods and animal-free proteins fully into the mainstream.
Keeping Focus
While we need to accept that we cannot change certain external conditions like high inflation, we can still change how we operate and continue addressing the unique challenges within the industry. Improving speed to market and the cost-effectiveness, scalability, and quality of plant-based R&D and manufacturing are essential for the long-term health of the industry. This need is even greater in the short term, however, when the external market forces have made life more difficult.
Sartorius can help you achieve your goals at any stage, from R&D to pilot plant and large-scale manufacturing.
How Can We Help?
Sartorius can help you by providing high-quality products, solutions, and support – all backed by process knowledge, industry experience, and a flexible, agile approach to addressing customer and industry challenges. This is what is demanded by a market where brands and manufacturers must be ready to seize opportunities and capitalize while ensuring quality and cost-effectiveness at the same time.
Here, we’ll examine the main challenges and showcase the Sartorius products and solutions that offer the most value.
Cost-effectiveness and Affordability
Development and manufacturing processes must be cost-effective for your bottom line and help make your plant-based products as affordable and appealing as possible to consumers.
The Umetrics® Suite of software from Sartorius gives you full control over your data in the development and production of plant-based foods, allowing you to streamline your existing processes as well as help you launch new products.
Product Development
MODDE® is a DOE (Design of Experiments) software that allows you to select the criteria you want for your future product and define the trials you need to perform, reducing them to the minimum and resulting in speed to market.
Product Optimization
If you are looking to boost production yield, capacity utilization, or sustainability, modeling your process with SIMCA® will give you valuable information on the factors that will have the greatest influence towards reaching your goal.
Process Control
Before any deviations are visible to the plant operator, SIMCA®-online lets you see if your process is running regularly or is about to exceed permissible limits. You can also see and correct parameters that are out of range, providing full process control and predictive maintenance as an option.
Scalability
With robust benchtop products and solutions, you will be able to replicate results at large volumes:
Octet® platform for an advanced, fast, and fluidics-free approach to protein-protein and protein-small molecule analysis
Preparation of culture media and additives using single-use technologies, including mixing bags and storage bags
Ambr® 250 and Biostat® B fermenters help you optimize processes. Fully scalable, these benchtop bioreactors support fast and reliable development and characterization of your processes throughout all phases
Range of separation solutions – Vivaflow® for screening, Sartoflow® Smart, and Sartoflow® Advanced for scale-up or scale-down processes
Choice of crossflow solutions (cassette and hollow fibers) for the separation and concentration of the protein of interest
Low binding advantages and ease of cleaning with Hydrosart® membranes
Sterile filtration at the end of the process thanks to the Aquasart® Family
Speed to Market
The race is on to meet demand and attract consumers. As a result, getting your product to market as quickly and effectively as possible is critical:
Spent media analysis services let you determine the precise amount of amino acid and other contents of your cultured media. With a better understanding, you can more confidently and quickly select the right cell culture medium and feed combination and develop suitable feeding strategies. Available in four service tiers, ranging from basic insights all the way to full process understanding
Ambr® technology lets you run trials in parallel, increasing speed to market
Large-Scale Volumes
Sartorius products and services help you characterize and optimize your processes to take you closer to large-scale manufacturing. But we can also help bridge the gap with solutions that can be applied to volume production:
Media mixing and storage
Palletank® for Mixing is a stainless-steel container that is easy to handle.
Plastic Palletank® for Storage in 200L volumes is a cost-effective containment solution for storage and processing. Easy to clean and sanitize, they take up minimal space when empty and are stackable when filled.
Sterile filtration
With flow rates from 100 to 100,000 L/hr or even higher, our broad range of fully automated filtration solutions can make your processes faster, easier, and more economical at any scale.
Quality Assurance from R&D to final product
Sartorius’ laboratory products and services help you visualize and ensure that your processes meet the highest quality food standards. These include:
- Mycoplasma detection
Mycoplasma will slow, alter, and even halt cellular growth, significantly reducing yield. Microsart® Rapid Mycoplasma kits are a 3-hour PCR test to detect any mycoplasma present in the cell culture process, helping you reduce risk.
- Octet® BLI system
The Octet® BLI system is designed to detect and quantify target protein expression from cells. Thanks to the Ambr® 15 data bridge, the cell culture media can then be altered to optimize protein expression. The Octet® BLI system can also detect the presence of potentially undesirable proteins in the sample.
Talk to Us
The competition for companies developing plant-based foods and alternative proteins is fierce. Quality, taste, price, and speed to market are absolutely critical to the success of their products. A tougher environment for investment and scaling up from R&D to large-volume manufacturing also adds pressure.
As a trusted partner of the plant-based food industry with proven solutions to the challenges and a worldwide team of experts in USP and DSP food processes, Sartorius will get you where you want to go — not only faster but also more cost-effectively. Contact us and let’s get started.
