Cracking the Code on Cell-Cultured Seafood

By BlueNalu Team

External rendering of BlueNalu's first large-scale facility with capability to produce up to six million pounds of premium seafood products annually

This week, BlueNalu announced that we have unlocked the path to significant profitability in our first large-scale facility due, in part, to a series of breakthrough technologies that have been achieved by our team. But what exactly does that mean and why is it so important?

Despite the many transformational benefits that cell-cultured products provide to the food industry, the nascent field requires significant technology milestones to reach large scale – a task that has yet to be proven by any cell-cultured food company. To date there have been a handful of technical assessments published that analyze the feasibility of producing these products at large scale. For example, two technical assessments were published in 2021 by Dr. David Humbird, a techno-economic analyst for industrial biotechnology, and the environmental consultants at CE Delft. These assessments described a very narrow pathway in which culturing animal cells in a mixture of nutrients could be feasible and profitable at large scale. A subsequent article by Joe Fassler in the now defunct publication The Counter put companies to the test and put investors on notice that the science wasn’t there… yet.

To be fair, these third parties did their homework. Their evaluations assessed the industry at large, using comparisons to conventional products to make general projections regarding the future of the space. However, what Humbird, CE Delft, Fassler and others failed to appreciate at the time was that BlueNalu was already on its way towards developing the technology described in that very narrow pathway and conducting our own TEA to validate our assumptions. We are proud to say we have cracked the code.

So, what are the groundbreaking technologies that BlueNalu has been able to achieve? Let’s break it down:

1. Cell-cultured foods are grown in large bioreactors, like what you would find at a brewery. To grow cells quickly and efficiently in these large tanks depends on the technology developed for the cells inside. Typically, stem-cells, microcarriers and the technologies used for cell-therapies have not been inherently scalable in large quantities. However, going back to the beer analogy, yeast cells that are grown in suspension for brewing can rapidly proliferate, sometimes reaching up to 1M liters. These breweries utilize a single-cell suspension technology to reach mass volume for their beverages.

   BlueNalu’s groundbreaking technology has unlocked the code for non-GMO single cell suspension for our fish cells, resulting in high growth rates that will accelerate scale-up to our large bioreactors, which are projected to reach 100,000L, (again, like the size you would find in a brewery) for our first large scale facility. This is a huge breakthrough, as one of the main concerns for the cell-cultured foods industry is the challenge of efficiently scaling.

2. Seafood products are often a combination of muscle and fat. Bluefin tuna toro, our first product to market, is a premium seafood portion that is especially driven by fat and prized for its omega 3 content. One way to grow these cells is using the bioreactors mentioned above to grow each type of cell – so that is a separate bioreactor for muscle cells, and another for fat cells. However, this process is costly and requires significant capital expenditures to acquire bioreactors for each cell type.

   This is where BlueNalu’s lipid-loading technique comes into play. This technology allows us to use just one cell type while developing structures comparable to what you would already have in food. This allows us to reduce costly capital expenditures by more than 50% while still enabling us to make products with higher fat profiles and sensory attributes.

These technologies are protected either as industry know-how or by patents pending and are applicable in categories other than finfish too. BlueNalu’s own techno-economic assessment (TEA), which generally aligned with previous studies by third parties, was conducted by a global Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firm that assessed our intellectual property, tested our assumptions, and evaluated the feasibility of each piece of equipment required for large-scale production. We chose to take an even more conservative approach than some previously published industry assessments and, even still, the TEA validated that our technology pathway was not just feasible but profitable. When we apply BlueNalu’s intellectual property with a premium product category like bluefin tuna toro, we believe we can achieve a very attractive 75% margin in our first large-scale production facility.

In order to achieve commercial viability, the cell-cultured protein industry must overcome considerable technology challenges that include scalable cell growth technologies; the development of food-grade raw materials; production methods that enable regulatory approval and consumer adoption; and processes that support continuous volume production. In addition, the cell-cultured protein industry must identify market, species, and product opportunities that will result in consumer adoption, ideally with demonstrable benefits. Yet, time and time again our team has solved critical challenges that have accelerated our pathway to commercialization. Our technology, species selection, product format and market fit provide the perfect combination for a product with the potential to revolutionize seafood. We are excited to find out where this journey will take us, but one thing is for sure: there is a sea of opportunity ahead!