Yeasty, a startup company headquartered in Paris has raised €1.4 million in a pre-seed funding round. The goal is to further develop and scale its sustainable protein derived from upcycled brewer’s yeast.
Led by Asterion Ventures, other companies like Satgana and Caméléon Invest participated in the round. The startup company plans to use the funding to produce samples on an industrial scale. By 2025, Yeasty hopes to build a site with a production capacity of 5,000 tons per year.
To make its innovative product, Yeasty takes brewer’s yeast, a byproduct of beer production, and uses a proprietary process to remove the bitterness that has previously prevented the ingredient from being widely used. The following step is to then make the yeast into a flour that is suitable for a range of applications, such as alt protein products, pet food, and sports and medical nutrition.
However, Yeasty is not the only one using yeast as a base ingredient. Other companies worldwide are also working on producing protein from yeast. These include Israel’s NextFerm, which produces a protein called ProteVin, and ProteinDistellery, which has created what it claims is the first fully customisable vegan protein with all the functionality of animal protein.
Biospringer has created a fermented yeast-based protein. Yeap, created by the founder of cultivated meat company Aleph Farms, is developing a sustainable protein derived from upcycled yeast.
“Yeasty aims at becoming a leader in the alternative protein market by democratizing the most complete ingredient, with a low impact. Thanks to our unique technology, we are bringing value to an abundant by-product, and with the support of our investors, we will be able to accelerate our growth,” says Juan Londono, co-founder of Yeasty.
