WARWICK, ENGLAND – Global Ag-Foodtech company, Moolec Science, announced the expansion of its portfolio with the development of egg replacements and the expansion of its dairy offering, increasing the range of its animal-free food solutions. Moolec uses molecular farming, a hybrid approach to plant and cell-based production technologies for alternative proteins, to improve the affordability of animal-free food solutions.

“We started exploring the space more than 10 years ago,” said Gastón Paladini, chief executive officer and co-founder of Moolec Science. “We were the first team to fully deregulate a molecular farming crop and its functionalized protein concentrate for its use in the cheese-making industry, a product that has been successfully used in the manufacturing of thousands of tons of soft and hard cheeses. Since then, we expanded to animal-free meat ingredients and are now announcing a broadening of our pipeline into dairy and egg replacements. Proteins are responsible for the functionality, mouth experience and many nutritional aspects in food. The greatest food experiences are mostly those which include high-quality products. And top products only use the best ingredients. We want to collaborate with B2C food companies to offer the optimal journey and proper affordability for consumers by using our integral animal-free solutions.”

Moolec leveraged the engineering of ovum protein into wheat for an egg replacement specially designed for the bakery industry. This and the use of oat protein with co-expressed whey protein for the alternative dairy space add two products to the meat analogues currently in Moolec's pipeline. Those meat analogues consist of blends of soybean with selected porcine proteins and pea with bovine proteins.

“Our selection of dairy and egg proteins will be produced in the host crop,” said Henk Hoogenkamp, chief product officer and co-founder. “We are going to let the plants, the sun and the land work and, after only basic processing, Moolec's product will have superior nutritional and functional properties for a fraction of the cost. For example, our wheat and egg protein products will have a higher content of digestible protein and, thus, improved nutritional value.”

Recently, Moolec acquired a nutritional oil technology for the production of gamma-linolenic acid (aka GLA, branded SONOVA). The technology complements the company's bovine chymosin production platform, both of which are based in the safflower crop, resulting in significant efficiencies.