Those Vegan Cowboys Unveils Animal-Free Casein for Meltier, Stretchier Cheese

Dutch-Belgian food tech startup Those Vegan Cowboys has debuted its precision-fermented casein protein, with plans to launch animal-free cheese in 2025.

Animal-free casein is having a moment. From new startups pushing the envelope with structural breakthroughs, to companies raising money to commercialise the protein, to the world’s largest mozzarella supplier diving into the bioidentical ingredient, casein is high on the agenda for alt-dairy producers.

Now, Those Vegan Cowboys is adding to the list of developments, launching its precision-fermented casein to the market. The ingredient has been four years in the making, and will be unveiled at the Future Food-Tech summit in London tomorrow.

Instead of a cow, the protein is produced via fermentation in a stainless steel tank dubbed Margaret (after former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady), and can outperform its conventional counterpart under certain conditions in cheese.

The animal-free casein is being tested by multiple industry players, including dairy companies and Michelin-starred restaurants. The plan, as CEO Hille van der Kaa tells Green Queen, is to launch cheeses on its own as well as through partners, starting with the US in mid-2025.

According to industry bodies the Precision Fermentation Alliance and Food Fermentation Europe, precision fermentation combines the process of traditional fermentation with the latest advances in biotechnology to efficiently produce a compound of interest, such as a protein, flavour molecule, vitamin, pigment, or fat.

Cheese that stretches and melts better

The brainchild of Dutch entrepreneurs Jaap Korteweg and Niko Koffeman, Those Vegan Cowboys was founded in 2019 a year after they sold plant-based meat brand The Vegetarian Butcher to Unilever.

To make the protein, the startup collaborates with Wageningen University, Leiden University, and Ghent University. “We currently work with different microbes/strains,” says van der Kaa. “We work with bacteria, as well as yeast, as well as [other] fungi.”

Casein makes up 80% of the protein content found in milk, and is crucial to the taste and functional attributes of dairy products like cheese – it’s what makes hard cheeses melt and stretch when they’re heated, allowing water and fat to emulsify and deliver the desired mouthfeel.

But to combat the industry’s climate impact, the animal-free casein space has been expanding rapidly, with startups such as New Culture, Change Foods, Standing Ovation, Eden Brew, Fermify, Zero Cow Factory, Fooditive Group, Alpine Bio, and Formo (which has joined forces with Those Vegan Cowboys). And that’s before you consider molecular farming companies like Moolec, Miruku, NewMoo and Finally Foods, and plant-based casein makers such as Pureture and Climax Foods.

Those Vegan Cowboys suggests that its fermentation-derived casein stands out by “significantly” improving the stretchability of cheese when compared to bovine casein – up to five times better, alongside a lower melting point.

“We analysed the functionality of caseins in a broad sense, including sources other than cows. The scientists developed a new recipe for a casein protein produced by microbes, which boasts better properties compared to the cow’s casein combination under specific conditions or for specific products,” explains van der Kaa.

“Over the past decades, we learned a lot about natural variation in caseins between cows and their impact on [the] functionality of dairy products,” adds Kasper Hettinga, professor of dairy processing and functionality at Wageningen University. “Precision fermentation gives flexibility to dairy producers by creating casein-based ingredients with optimal functionality, by making use of the variability found in nature.”

Additionally, Those Vegan Cowboys’s ingredient only needs a fifth of the land and water that animal-based casein needs, while generating 80% less carbon and methane. “By working with vegetable fats, we give ourselves more freedom to avoid cholesterol and use less saturated fat in our cheese,” adds CTO Will van den Tweel.

A big 2024 in store for Those Vegan Cowboys

Those Vegan Cowboys has established eight partnerships – including a dairy cooperative, a pizza maker, a Michelin-starred eatery, and multiple cheese producers – to test its casein for flavour and functionality, the long-term goal being to outmatch bovine dairy on every front.

One of these companies is Westland Kaas, a cheese producer that is also among Those Vegan Cowboys’s oldest collaborators. The two entities jointly launched vegan cheese range WildWestLand in supermarkets in the Netherlands and Belgium in 2020.

“They tell us what kind of specifications they prefer,” van der Kaa says of the partners. “We also work together on cheeses. Later this year, we hope to have selected our partners to go to market with next year.”

Those Vegan Cowboys has also formed a strategic alliance with Germany’s Formo, uniting R&D operations across strain engineering, bioprocessing and large-scale production to aid their separate efforts for product development and commercialisation.

One of the goals is to reduce costs – the functional superiority of Those Vegan Cowboys’s casein allows cheese producers to use less of the protein for the same result, ultimately lowering the price of their products. “We expect to have price parity on a functional level within three to five years,” reveals van der Kaa, whose team is currently producing on a cubic-metre-scale at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant.

Van der Kaa says the Formo collaboration is going well. “We are very happy with the collaboration so far and learned a lot from each other’s failures and successes.” Another objective is to break through the regulatory barriers – Those Vegan Cowboys’s casein is considered a novel food under EU regulations, which need to undergo a robust premarket approval process. In fact, only New Culture has been cleared to sell precision-fermented casein anywhere in the world, earning self-determined GRAS status in the US.

Those Vegan Cowboys is preparing dossiers in the US, Europe as well as Asia, and has big plans for 2025. It aims to launch its own D2C cheese called Margaret’s Finest (it has previously hinted that it’s working on Camembert, Brie, Feta and Gouda-style cheeses), one or two cheeses with its B2B industry partners, and a “love baby” cheese with Formo, all at once.

This will be facilitated by its first investment round – the startup has been bootstrapped by Korteweg and Koffeman until now. “We are currently raising €15M to get the right partners on board for our next step,” says van der Kaa. These efforts will be helped by the fact that fermentation is hot among investors – especially in Europe.

Formo, which secured one of the year’s largest investments for alternative proteins last month, has released its own line of fermentation-derived soft cheeses in German supermarkets – but these are not made via precision fermentation or considered novel foods. Its precision fermentation tech for casein is being earmarked for a 2025 launch.