San Francisco startup, Zero Acre Farms is on a mission to replace vegetable oils with a fermented alternative that is more sustainable and healthier. According to the founding team, its palm oil and corn oil replacement will help fight deforestation and the health issues caused by cheap vegetable fats.
The startup has raised $37 million in a Series A round led by U.S. ‘CO2 slashing’ VC Lowercarbon Capital. Participants included Coldplay, Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition, celebrity chef Dan Barber, Dr Andrew Weil and Richard Branson and his family.
Zero Acre estimates that up to 20% of daily dietary calories can be attributed to vegetable oils that are added to everything. In response, the company offers a vegetable oil substitute created via fermentation and the feeding of microorganisms with better nutritional values and a smaller carbon footprint. “It’s like making beer but instead of producing ethanol, the microbes produce oil and fat — and a lot of it,” CEO and co-founder Jeff Nobbs told TechCrunch.
Zero Acre has selected specific strains of microbes that, fed with the right food, are able to store and produce large quantities of clean oil. “We’re not creating a synthetic oil that’s ‘only’ better for the environment,” Nobbs says. “It’s a new category of oils and fats, we can make compositions that are more suitable for food and better for people. It’s a 1:1 replacement, not like using almond flour instead of wheat flour — you just use it instead of whatever product you’re replacing.”
However, Nobbs knows that the product cannot compete, in terms of scale and cost, with traditional oil operations. Therefore, he has been careful to market the product to a specific subset of consumers and has focussed on the ethical shopper demographic- those that buy organic produce, fair trade items and pricier plant-based products. Chefs could be a viable audience as well, given that the product produces fewer harmful fumes at high temperatures.
Nobbs notes that the fermentation process goes through a series of small adjustments to find the right production conditions. “Little things can have a big effect,” he told TechCrunch. “We have a whole platform around finding those optimal parameters. There’s still a lot of research to be done, but we’ve had some breakthroughs, and I think we’re working with the world’s best organisms for this.”
Nonetheless, Zero Acre has been able to scale for production at this early stage and is currently able to manufacture thousands of litres of fermented oil. Retail launch is expected this year, although branding and packaging remain unconfirmed, but will be supported by the funding.
