Is this the most sustainable protein in the world? with Yonatan Golan of Brevel

To celebrate the launch of their new facility this week, I spoke with Yonatan Golan, co-founder of Brevel. Brevel makes possibly the most sustainable protein in the world through a process that speeds up microalgae production 100x.

We talked about: 
👻 The concept of 'ghost protein' 
🚀 How fermentation x photosynthesis = efficiency revolution 
🥛 Why dairy is a good starting place 
🏗️ Their new facility

#climatetech #sustainablefood #alternativeprotein

Transcript

Ryan Grant Little: 0:06

Welcome to another Climate Tech Podcast interviews with the people trying to save us from ourselves. In this episode, I spoke with Yonatan Golan, co-founder and CEO of Brevel. Brevel makes ultra high yield protein from microalgae thanks to a top secret innovation that speeds up the process 100 times relative to nature. I reached Yonatan on the production floor, as you'll hear in the recording, at their facility in southern Israel. I'm Ryan Grant Little. Thanks for being here, yonatan. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, ryan. It's a pleasure to be here with you. You're the CEO of Brevel, which is a company you founded in 2016 together with your two brothers. What does Brevel do?

Yonatan Golan: 0:51

t Brevel, we produce alternative protein for the food industry. We do this using microalgae microscopic algae which grow extremely fast and have loads of protein and other nutritional ingredients, and we use a unique technology we developed which significantly improves and breaks through the glass ceiling that this industry has seen until today. But our customers are food manufacturers who use our protein in their applications.

Ryan Grant Little: 1:14

And what are your backgrounds? So I've had several sibling pairs on the podcast by now founder pairs, but there's three of you, which is very impressive. What are your backgrounds? Are you all food people?

Yonatan Golan: 1:26

So it happens to be that I'm actually vegan, so this is a big driver for myself. But we're not food people. Originally I'm actually a physicist. My younger brother is a mechanical engineer and he's the one who came up with the idea, who developed the majority of the technology breakthroughs, and our older brother, who's the COO, is actually a medical doctor, a surgeon in practice and once things started moving quickly, he joined full-time in the company and also he has the aspect of understanding the health issues with the current food we have out there, and so we have. I mean, we share a vision of making the world a better place, each from their own angle. It's technology, nutrition at large and health.

Ryan Grant Little: 2:11

So a physicist, a mechanical engineer and a surgeon. So your parents must be very proud. And there is actually more of a family connection to this with the name, right? So the company name Brevel comes from your grandfather, if I remember correctly. Tell us about that.

Yonatan Golan: 2:29

Right, yeah, that's true. So our mother's father our mother was born in the US and her father actually fled Germany in the early 1930s, fled to the US with his family, and there he was also a mechanical engineer, like my younger brother, and he started a company for building motors slow rotating motors and the company's name was Breville. He had two big factories, one in New Jersey and one in Montreal, and we decided, once we started our new adventure, we decided to call it Breville two generations later. So we carry the original entrepreneurial spirit and vision of our grandfathers.

Ryan Grant Little: 3:12

I love that One of the companies I'm invested in called Willicroft, which makes plant-based cheese out of the Netherlands. That name comes from the farm of Brad Vanstone, the founder of Willicroft. So his grandparents had a dairy farm called Willicroft two generations before. So interesting to see that at play again in our sector and bringing back some family legacies into this. So you mentioned that, the proteins created from microalgae. I don't believe in much, but I believe in the outsized possibilities of both mushrooms and microalgae to save the world or at least make it a better place, and so just a few stats here that I dug up Microalgae, relative to beef, is about 90 times more efficient in land use, 40 times more efficient in emissions and about 170 times more efficient in terms of water consumption. You've called your protein ingredient the most sustainable protein on earth and, very spookily, also a ghost protein. So talk a little bit more about it and why this is such a wonder source or wonder protein.

Yonatan Golan: 4:19

Right. So microaggie have been viewed for many decades as one of the possible solutions for mitigating climate change, for solving our food crisis that we're facing, because, basically, microalgae are the first organism on this planet to use external energy to grow. They developed photosynthesis 2 billion years ago.

Yonatan Golan: 4:39

I mean, microalgae are the most resource-efficient organism on this planet and have this potential to solve many of our challenges, but until today, microalgae have two very big barriers. One of them is taste. Microalgae, unfortunately, doesn't taste well and this is an understatement and they are very expensive to produce, so they're not really relevant yet for the food industry. These are two of the challenges we came to change. The technology we developed, which I think we can maybe talk about in a moment, enables microalgae to be much more affordable and we're able to produce protein which is nothing like you would imagine coming from microalgae. It's very flavor neutral this is why we call it actually one of our customers called it ghost protein and it's completely white, it's not green, it's not yucky, it doesn't have any flavor or color or texture that you would imagine from something coming from the sea, from water, and can be blended into any plant-based application out there. It's plant-based meat, plant-based cheese, beverages or whatever you want and really provide a solution that the food industry is looking for.

Ryan Grant Little: 5:52

And what is the nutritional profile of this? I mean, it must be pretty good, right.

Yonatan Golan: 5:56

Right, yeah, talk a bit about that, absolutely so. It's a full amino acid profile, I mean it's a full protein. It's non-GMO. I mean it's a full protein. It's non-GMO. I mean we use natural bicarbase strains. It's non-allergenic. It has all of the good stuff you want from your food, while being very environmentally friendly and affordable for the food industry.

Ryan Grant Little: 6:18

Okay, and so you've been able to achieve yields a hundred times greater than I guess presumably how this grows in the wild or underwater, and it's something about the combination of fermentation and light. So this is the technology, this is the process. Can you talk a little bit more about what that looks like? How come 100 times faster?

Yonatan Golan: 6:37

Sure, so typically, microagrives are grown outdoors using sunlight and CO2. They grow efficiently, but not efficiently enough to make it a commodity for the food industry. An alternative way to grow microalgae and this is being done today worldwide is to use fermentation, basically add sugar. The process is similar to how you would grow yeast or bacteria or fungi, and once you feed microalgae sugar, they grow a hundred times faster than in outdoor conditions. However, today, fermentation like this is done in the dark, in large stainless steel tanks, and the microalgae are not exposed to light, and thus they lose a lot of the nutritional value, a lot of the qualities of what they could produce.

Yonatan Golan: 7:24

Most of what you want for a microalgae needs light to be produced, and so we managed to develop a technology which combines fermentation and photosynthesis in a single process, and this may sound simplistic, but it's as simplistic as thinking that you can just plug in a battery into a core and have a Tesla. I mean, it takes much more than just plugging light into a fermenter. It's a very challenging technological problem, and this is exactly what we managed to develop and solve and patent in Breville.

Ryan Grant Little: 7:57

And what are the challenges? What's challenging? Maybe about the process or about microalgae as a product, and can you turn a ghost protein like this into something that tastes as good as a T-bone steak?

Yonatan Golan: 8:08

So regarding taste, we want to provide a protein which tastes like nothing, that you wouldn't know it's there. And then I mean our customers, our food manufacturers. They do their magic. I mean we don't know how to produce a flavor of a T-bone steak. I mean we don't know how to produce a flavor of a T-bone steak. I mean there are amazing companies and startups and solutions out there for how to produce the best tasting chicken nuggets or plant-based fish or beverage or cheese. Plant-based cheese. We provide the nutritional value and we also provide functional qualities, so to provide the gelling properties of plant-based cheese and the texture and foaming and other properties that you want in food applications. So these are things that our customers know to do best. We provide them with the solution to bring that to their customers.

Ryan Grant Little: 9:01

Okay, and so do you have to customize it for each type of customer, or is it really just you've found a way to make this, as you say, ghost protein, this colorless, flavorless thing, and it gets shipped the same, regardless of the end application, whether it's plant-based fish or cheese or milk.

Yonatan Golan: 9:17

Right. So today we have several different variations of the product, and we're working on others as well, but eventually the end goal is to provide the nutritional value and then let the food manufacturers build on top of that whatever they need for their customers.

Ryan Grant Little: 9:34

I saw in Forbes something about milk, so that's maybe one of your first applications that's out on the market. Is that right?

Yonatan Golan: 9:40

Yeah. So just to be clear, it's not. I mean we do not develop and market the milk or the dairy alternatives that we're working on. We provide the solution for them to do that. We're starting with the dairy alternative space because this is the most difficult segment in the food industry to go into. Today. Plant-based protein is mostly soy protein and pea protein, and for plant-based meat applications there are excellent solutions For Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods and all of these other excellent companies out there. These are good solutions, but for plant-based dairy they don't have a neutral flavor to be able to provide the nutritional value without compromising flavor. And this is exactly where we can shine, really outperform what the other plant-based alternatives out there can provide by providing a very neutral flavored protein with an affordable cost for the food industry.

Ryan Grant Little: 10:38

Oh, that's interesting. I mean, I do hear a lot that especially cheese is kind of the hardest one to nail and I hadn't kind of put two and two together that maybe it's because of the underlying protein source of something like soy or beans or pea that's causing that kind of flavor to sneak in.

Yonatan Golan: 10:55

Right, yeah, so, as I mentioned, I'm vegan. I have three small children who are vegan as well, and they eat their cereals in the morning with plant-based milk, with rice milk, and basically rice milk is just water and sugar. Nutritionally wise, it doesn't have any significant value. That also goes for plant-based cheese. I mean, they could be tasty, it could be excellent on your pizza, but it's basically oil and starch which forms the basis of it. You would find it very difficult to find plant-based cheese which has any significant nutritional value, and that's exactly as I said, because the protein sources aren't good enough yet to provide that. In this application, this is exactly where we want to go in first.

Ryan Grant Little: 11:36

You've raised a round recently, a very successful round of $18.5 million. Congratulations on that. And so a few things. One, I know that at the time of airing of this episode, you'll just have moved into a new facility, so that's also a big step. And I'm curious you know $18.5 million. How are you going to spend that money? Asking now, both as a podcaster and as someone who's invested in an earlier round, Right?

Yonatan Golan: 12:06

Yeah. So we were very fortunate to have closed a significant round last summer and, as you mentioned, we just moved into our brand new factory which we will start producing in by the end of this year, going commercial with our products. So a small part, I would say, of the investment has gone into building and equipping the new factory, but the majority is still invested in continuing to develop and improve the technology. We're working with the fermentation technology, then also working and developing the processes, both upstream, which is how to grow the microbiology very efficiently in the technology, and then a significant part also downstream, and how to extract the protein from the microbiology. But we're not only developing protein.

Yonatan Golan: 12:56

A big part of what we do is also extract and develop oil fraction from the microbiology, the fiber, the pigments and other ingredients that the microbiology produces and will be commercialized. Independently of our ability to get to cost parity with solutions out there, mostly PN soy, which is the benchmark that we're compared against to be able to get to cost parity. This comes not only from the very efficient for very cost effective process we have, but actually from being able to commercialize close to 100% of the biomass and the microalgae we produce. And the ability to commercialize. Almost 100% comes from the fact, again, from the fact of having light in the process. So we not only produce valuable protein but we produce very functional oils, very soluble and functional fibers and pigments and other ingredients, and through being able to price the protein even at soil level costs and still be very profitable, because we can maximize the profitability from the same biomass.

Ryan Grant Little: 14:11

And are there other people working in this field, with microalgae specifically, do you have kind of like a race happening with some competitors to get to price parity with the kind of traditional ones like soy and pea?

Yonatan Golan: 14:22

So in Microalgae, there are amazing companies out there doing excellent work. Today, none of them have the ability to combine fermentation and light, so but there are companies doing fermentation, which they're, so they're limited to producing ingredients that do not need light to be produced, and this limits their ability to get to very affordable pricing in the long term, though some of them already have products in the market and are doing an excellent job. The biggest competition we see is actually the existing solutions soy and pea protein. This is the biggest market and it's very similar to, eventually, the benchmark that Tesla, for example, has to face is the existing automotive industry, not necessarily their electric companies. So eventually the biggest competition is the existing industry.

Yonatan Golan: 15:12

But another very interesting field is mycelium companies, growing fungi and fermentation. Also, there are amazing companies paving the way into introducing new sources of protein in the industry. But out of these new companies we actually don't see as competition, we see them as partners in this journey of providing new solutions for the food industry, making it much more sustainable and healthy for consumers, and each company that succeeds helps all of the others in entering this market. The need in the market is so huge that anyone that would have a viable solution would have a place in the market.

Ryan Grant Little: 15:52

Really I see them as colleagues doing this journey together.

Yonatan Golan: 15:56

Of course, we alone we won't be able to provide a whole solution for the whole industry. I mean, it's too big of a problem for a single company to tackle, and I see all of these other companies as really as partners in this bigger vision.

Ryan Grant Little: 16:10

Yeah, that's well put. I mean, we're basically talking about trying to replace an entire animal protein industry with viable options like this, or to substantially complement it, let's say so. Yeah, that's a very valid point, and presumably also there are a number of hybrid solutions that you'll be working on, looking at kind of other protein companies where you can be a portion of it. So I could imagine that maybe your microalgae protein complements a soy protein or a pea protein and you look at hybrid solutions. I'm seeing much more of that in the market right now. In general, Absolutely.

Yonatan Golan: 16:43

Yeah, this is also true. I mean, there are also very interesting companies in the precision fermentation space producing milk proteins, casein and other proteins, and we see them also as partners. We see them as companies that we could do hybrid products together. They would provide the specific functionality of stretchiness of cheese and we can complement their products with the nutritional value they need for the consumers.

Ryan Grant Little: 17:10

So we see Austria that's working on that problem as well. You're based in Israel and Israel has a massive food tax scene relative to the country's size.

Yonatan Golan: 17:28

Why do you think that is so? I don't know if I have a full answer, but I think the food is a big issue in Israel, also because of kosher needs, but also I believe Tel Aviv is the best place for vegans in the world. It was crowned, I think, a few years ago, and also personally as a vegan, I mean it's really easy to find vegan food anywhere I go in Israel, and I think it also has to do with the kosher thing. I mean, out of the street food, falafel and hummus and other street food is vegan, so there's a lot of people are very conscious of the food we eat here.

Yonatan Golan: 18:01

I'm not religious, of course. I don't practice religion, so of course it's not an issue for me, but it is something that people are very aware of, and so veganism, I think, is something that is very popular here, and it's not that all of my colleagues, ceos in the space, are vegan, but we have there's a lot of need. I mean many of the employees in these companies in the food tech space come from a desire to develop something better for them and for their siblings and for their friends. I mean there's a lot of understanding that this is something that should be tackled and solved, and so I think this is a big part of, specifically, the food tech space, which also is part of the larger tech industry here in Israel.

Ryan Grant Little: 18:50

Indeed. Yeah, there's a big tech industry as well, and you're farther south, right, you're not in Tel Aviv, you're kind of with a number of food tech companies in the south of the country. Is that right? Where are you exactly?

Yonatan Golan: 19:02

So our new factory is in Kiryat Gat. It's actually the northern part of the Israeli desert, so we're pretty much south right, about an hour south of Tel Aviv, further south than the rest of the food tech seen here in Israel.

Ryan Grant Little: 19:16

Okay, and so maybe that's part of it as well is like trying to come up with novel ways to create food in a desert or, you know, in a small geographical area, and also the food security issue right, making sure that you have access to food domestically as well. How have things changed since October 7th in the operating environment, both in terms of kind of how you're you know, how you run your operations, but also in terms of investors and that type of thing. I mean, I imagine there's been some substantial changes as a company.

Yonatan Golan: 19:47

Right, absolutely, yeah. So I think that the situation is difficult for everyone on all sides here in the conflict, and it affects us as well, both on personal levels, each one of us in the company is affected by it and when the war just started on October 7th, we actually couldn't, because we're based in the south of Israel.

Yonatan Golan: 20:06

We couldn't work for about a month because we didn't have enough safety measures in place in the facility, but after about a month we got back running. The situation is still complicated, but as a company we're doing actually very well. We were very fortunate to close a significant round a few months before October 7th, and so we entered the situation at a very stable place and we have a long enough runway so that we can operate freely and not be concerned about where to raise the next round front. Of course, israel today is not a very attractive place to invest, in which I completely understand. I would have treated it the same if I were in Europe or in the US as an investor.

Yonatan Golan: 20:54

But the situation will change. The war will be over I hope sooner than later and the appetite for Israeli tech and innovation and entrepreneurs will go back to normal. Once things are better here and we're working on building the company and getting ready for once, the situation returns to normal. So I would say I'm not. I mean on a personal level. Of course we're affected, but we continue working as usual. Mostly and I'm not concerned in the long term at all it will be over and business will go back to as usual, and I would say that we have tremendous support from all of our investors, all of our potential customers and partners we're working with. We're continuing just as usual. Everyone we work with understands that the need to provide a sustainable solution for our food is not affected by any war, any conflict or any other issue, and this is a tangible product that must be developed, and so we have tremendous support and we're moving on and we're very focused on our larger mission.

Ryan Grant Little: 22:06

And so now, with the new facility up and running and this runway, what can people do to help you with your mission? Are you hiring right now, are you looking for any specific types of resources, new customers? How can people get in touch if they want to help?

Yonatan Golan: 22:21

Yeah, thanks for that. So we're looking for potential partners and customers in the food space companies developing plant-based solutions and who are wanting to improve the product in terms of flavor, nutritional value, health properties and so on. And we're looking for new sources of protein and other ingredients. We're looking for experts in the fields of oil and fibers and nutritional supplements and others that are looking to consult us and help us with developing our new products as well. We're looking also for investors in the long term to build relationships with who share the same vision of a better world through improving our nutrition.

Yonatan Golan: 23:06

And yes, we're always hiring. At the moment we're still hiring locally, but we're just hiring now a business development manager. So if there's anyone in Israel now listening to this and in the space of business development, we would like to hear from you. And also, the long-term plan is to scale up manufacturing with partners in different locations in the world to build large-scale facilities with local partners in each geography. So we already have a few in different locations in the Middle East, in Europe, in Asia, and we're looking for more that are interested in partnering and building large scale facilities and operating them to produce the protein and other ingredients that are needed in their region.

Ryan Grant Little: 23:48

Okay, that's interesting. That's news to me as well. So, okay, now I know how you're spending the money. That all sounds like a good use of cash, and the best place to reach you is LinkedIn, which I'll link into the show notes. Yeah, okay, so LinkedIn. It is Yonatan. Thank you so much. It was great talking to you. Thank you, ryan, it was a pleasure. Thanks for listening to another Climate Tech podcast. It would mean a lot if you would subscribe, rate and share this podcast. Get in touch anytime with tips and guest recommendations at hello at climatetechpodcom. Find me, ryan Grant Little, on LinkedIn. I'll be back with another episode next week. Bye for now.