USA – American food company General Mills has partnered with Israeli food startup Remilk to explore precision fermentation technology in the production of dairy-free products in the United States.

General Mills has already started using Remilk in the production of its Bold Cultr cream cheese, which it launched in 2021 using Perfect Day’s precision fermentation whey as a base.

Remilk uses fermentation technology to modify microbes to produce dairy proteins without using any dairy inputs.

They take cow DNA and copy it into fermented yeast resulting in a more sustainable product compared to conventionally processed dairy products.

The company claims to produce milk which is 100% identical to cow milk just without the lactose and the negative environmental impact. 

“Our solids require 1% of land compared to regular milk, 4% of the emissions of pollutants compared to regular milk, and 5% of the water required to produce a litre of milk in the traditional industry,” says Aviv Wolff the CEO and co-founder of Remilk.

The company, launched in 2019, has so far raised US$130 million in two fundraising rounds and currently has a valuation of US$325 million.

Its products serve as raw materials for food manufacturers to produce products with similar taste and texture to actual dairy allowing consumers.

The first product with General Mills is Bold Cultr cream cheese and the announcement of the partnership marks Remilk’s first commercial collaboration along with its debut into the U.S. market.

“The first product embodies our strategy: we connect with the largest companies in the world, and enter into the market in order to be able to reach every consumer in the world, and quickly,” said Aviv Wolff.

General Mills also announced that it is open to producing additional products with Remilk’s alternative protein in a strategy to expand its portfolio which currently consists of category-leading brands like Yoplait and Haagen-Dazs.

Three years ago, General Mills was one of the first major food companies to explore precision fermentation technology after its collaboration with Perfect Day and now with Remilk.

Other major players in the industry have also started dabbling in precision fermentation technology.

Mars recently launched milk chocolate bars using Perfect Day’s whey and Nestlé also launched a range of animal-free dairy beverages in partnership with Perfect Day.

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