By Cara Waters
The CSIRO has set its sights on helping animal-free dairy eventually get to supermarket shelves, backing a startup, Eden Brew, which is using fermentation technology to brew dairy alternatives.
Eden Brew is working on producing the same proteins found in cow’s milk, known as caesin micelles, without the cow, creating a dairy alternative that has no lactose, no cholesterol and does not induce allergies.
The product could potentially be another addition to the growing cohort of nut, soy and oat milks, which now make up around 15 per cent of the market.
Jim Fader is the chief executive and co-founder of Eden Brew which is launching dairy free milk using precision fermentation. Credit: Nick Moir
“There’s a huge gap in the market around consumer demand for alternatives to dairy milk,” Eden Brew co-founder and chief executive Jim Fader said. “We can deliver the best of both worlds here by being dairy-free and yet emulating dairy in so many ways.”
Mr Fader is a former Woolworths executive turned entrepreneur in residence at CSIRO’s venture arm Main Sequence and was brought in to start Eden Brew using a “venture science” model - where a challenge and global opportunity is identified with available scientific capability then deployed to tackle it. A pathway to market is then set up through an established industry player, which in Eden Brew’s case is the dairy co-operative Norco.
The model has enabled Eden Brew to get to launch stage with $4 million in funding and a staff of two.
“Startups can spend years in this ‘Death Valley’ space with limited resources, doing things sequentially and hopefully coming out the other side,” Mr Fader said. “The idea is to usurp that with the right skill sets around the table from the beginning and then it being properly funded.”
Main Sequence partner Phil Morle said there was a significant market for Eden Brew with $4.22 billion invested globally in alternative proteins in 2020.
“Our planet will be faced with challenges around producing enough food to feed the growing world population,” he said. “We have an opportunity with Eden Brew to pioneer a new food category and create a product that serves today’s consumers’ hunger and need for more options.”
While Eden Brew’s environmental footprint cannot be fully measured yet, the startup expects water use will be “a fraction of” traditional dairy, which typically uses 1,000 litres of water to produce one litre of milk. The environmental impact associated with breeding and grazing dairy cows will also be avoided.
Norco chief executive Michael Hampson said the dairy co-operative’s investment and co-founding role in Eden Brew offered value for its members, which were privately owned farms in New South Wales and Queensland and provided logistical and manufacturing expertise for the startup.
“We have seen this as an opportunity to take our supply chain, our route to market, and ready-made relationships with customers and consumers,” he said.
Eden Brew is undergoing prototype testing at CSIRO’s Werribee facility and is expected to launch its first product to market in the next 18 months after it gets approval from Food Standards Australia New Zealand.
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