New Culture, the innovative animal-free dairy company, has achieved a significant breakthrough on its path to spearheading a global shift towards sustainable, animal-free dairy alternatives.
The company has successfully scaled up its fermentation process to reach manufacturing volumes far surpassing its previous developmental scales. This advancement enables the creation of cheese equivalent to 25,000 pizzas per production run – a crucial stride towards providing animal-free dairy mozzarella to pizzerias across the United States. This achievement marks the world’s inaugural production of animal-free casein on such a large scale through precision fermentation. Casein, the essential functional dairy protein responsible for the stretchy and melty properties of cheese, was traditionally sourced solely from animal milk. New Culture’s fermentation-derived casein now allows them to produce mozzarella with the taste, texture, and nutritional attributes of conventional mozzarella, all without animal-derived ingredients, setting their products apart from existing plant-based cheeses.
This increase in production scale leads to an 80 percent reduction in product costs, keeping the company on track to meet its cost objectives after surpassing its core technical milestones for 2023. Additionally, New Culture has made substantial progress in expanding production capacity and anticipates that within three years, the cost of their mozzarella will align with that of the conventional version. Their yearly animal-free casein production volumes are projected to equate to over 14 million pizzas’ worth of cheese.
Co-founder and CSO, Inja Radman, stated, “Our exceptional team at New Culture has surmounted a series of highly intricate technical challenges to achieve the production of animal-free casein at this impressive scale. We’re reshaping the possibilities within the dairy sector in a way that is unparalleled.”
As New Culture continues to scale up manufacturing capabilities, it pioneers an industry with significant implications for environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and human health. Co-founder and CEO, Matt Gibson, emphasized, “This accomplishment is a pivotal moment for both New Culture and the broader food industry. We are entering an era where substantial quantities of genuine cheese can be produced without involving animals.”
Conventional cheese production consumes vast amounts of water and energy resources. Among all food products, cheese ranks highest in terms of freshwater usage and third highest in terms of land and greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, New Culture’s animal-free mozzarella requires a fraction of these resources, allowing consumers to savor their preferred cheeses without contributing to the damaging environmental impact linked to industrial dairy farming.
With this breakthrough, New Culture continues to disrupt the $154 billion global cheese sector while making animal-free cheese options more accessible than ever before. Starting in 2024, New Culture’s mozzarella will debut at Nancy Silverton’s renowned Pizzeria Mozza, one of America’s most acclaimed pizzerias, before expanding to other pizzerias across the country.
About New Culture
New Culture is at the forefront of the global movement towards an animal-free dairy future, offering cheese that replicates the stretch and melt of traditional cheese but devoid of any animal inputs. Essentially, it’s cow cheese without the cow. Through precision fermentation, the company replaces casein, the crucial dairy protein in cheese, with an animal-free version they create. This groundbreaking process enables them to mirror the taste and texture of conventional dairy products, significantly reducing the environmental impact of cheesemaking and its effects on animal and human health. New Culture has gained recognition with awards like Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Ideas Awards, and has been featured on NPR’s acclaimed podcast “How I Built This.” The company is also listed on the 2023 ClimateTech 100 and 2023 FoodTech 500 lists. It enjoys financial support from major fermentation and food companies like Kraft Heinz, ADM, and CJ, along with leading food-tech investors. With their innovative approach, New Culture is opening doors to the creation of any kind of cheese, completely animal-free. The future of dairy is here – and it’s delectable.
