Umiami's proprietary texturization process creates plant-based meat
Redalpine is excited to announce its investment in the EUR 26.5 million Series A round of Umiami, a French food tech startup aiming to overturn the way plant-based meat alternatives look, taste and feel.
The Paris-based company, Umiami, developed a proprietary texturization process to create plant-based whole cuts that resemble meat. Umiami has achieved this through a novel process they call “Umization” which provides one of the few real alternatives to the current market standard - extrusion. Umization is a cheap and easy-to-scale production process that delivers nutritionally superior and clean label (containing no texturing agents such as methylcellulose) products.
While there are a host of companies working on plant-based chicken chunks, Umiami stands out from other alternatives on the market with the unique ability to generate thick and juicy filets that taste great, regardless of whether they are eaten cold or hot. Umization allows to generate chicken filets that have the complex bite and texture of real chicken.
The Series A financing was led by Astanor Ventures and supported by Redalpine as well as historic investors Verso Capital, Newfund and BPI France. The fresh capital will be used for retail market entry and a first significant production scale up that will satisfy the rapidly growing demand for Umiami’s delicious products. In addition, the new funding will accelerate the research of future Umiami products to continue innovation and diversification within the alternative protein space.
“We must see umization as a development platform, which opens a new chapter for the vegetable protein market: it gives an exceptional similarity of texture, allows less denaturation of vegetable proteins, preserves the flavor of food and does not require the addition of artificial texturing agents“, says Founder and CEO Tristan Maurel.
“I am super excited to invest in Umiami. Plant-based foods are here to stay and with Umiami’s texturization technology, consumers won’t be able to distinguish the real meat from plant-based alternatives. I am looking forward to joining umiami on their endeavor.” says Nadine Geiser, Principal at Redalpine.
For more information, please visit Umiami's website or read this Les Echos article.