Israeli Food Tech SavorEat Launches Subsidiary Plant-Based Egg Startup

Israeli food tech SavorEat has established a new subsidiary venture focused on developing plant-based egg alternatives. Operating independently from the company, the new Egg’n’up venture is being built with support from Millennium Food-Tech, and will be fully dedicated to disrupting the US$227 billion global egg market. 

SavorEat, the Rehovot-headquartered plant-based startup that uses 3D-printing technology to develop vegan meat alternatives, has announced the opening of a subsidiary startup to tackle a different category of animal-based foods – eggs. Teaming up with investor Millennium Food-Tech, who previously backed SavorEat in its seed funding round, the company has opened Egg’n’up as an independent venture taking a crack at the plant-based egg. 

According to a report from Israeli startup news platform CTech, the smart protein investment fund will be supporting Egg’n’up with US$2.5 million. The news comes just months after SavorEat debuted its IPO on the TASE, becoming the first 3D-printed plant-based meat company to be publicly traded on the exchange.

We have discovered a great deal of potential in the company’s unique cellulose fibres, which we are translating into the development of additional products.

Rachel Vizman, Co-Founder & CEO, SavorEat

Commenting on the launch, SavorEat co-founder and CEO Racheli Vizman said: “I am delighted at the successful collaboration with Millennium Food-Tech. Our joint objective is to provide quality, healthy and tasty plant-based products to our consumers.”

The idea for the venture was a spin-off from SavorEat’s original patent-pending technology, which is based on research licensed from the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Agriculture. SavorEat’s vegan, kosher and gluten-free meat alternatives are 3D-printed by a robot, using cartridges containing plant-based ingredients and a nano-cellulose fibre to provide texture for the analogue. 

“We have discovered a great deal of potential in the company’s unique cellulose fibres, which we are translating into the development of additional products that will provide us with broader exposure to a greater variety of audiences, including vegetarians, vegans, and flexitarians,” Vizman explained. 

“We believe that leaving a footprint in an additional sector, apart from meat alternatives, will open up new business opportunities and enable us to continue doing what we have strongly believed in from the outset.” 

The available data shows that there is both a need and considerable demand for an egg substitute.

Chanan Scheider, CEO, Millennium Food-Tech

Currently, Egg’n’up is developing substitutes under the leadership of SavorEat co-founder and CSO professor Oded Shoseyov, but the firm is now looking for talent to fill the position of CEO and vice president of R&D. Egg’n’up is slated to debut its first product by Q4 of 2022, according to a press release.

Speaking about the huge opportunities that lie in the alternative egg market, Chanan Scheider, CEO of Millennium Food-Tech, said: “The available data shows that there is both a need and considerable demand for an egg substitute in the pastries market and additional markets.”

“The new company established brings with it another and better solution compared to its competitors, which could turn it into a significant global player in this field.”

It has been revealed that Egg’n’up will be taking a similar go-to-market approach that SavorEat is aiming for, starting with B2B clients through foodservice channels and manufacturers, before launching B2C and retail products.  

While vegan egg alternatives are not a novelty, there is ample room for more sustainable egg analogues to be developed to disrupt the more than one trillion eggs being consumed around the world each year, making up the US$227 billion global egg market. 

Perhaps the most famous pioneer in the space is San Francisco-based food tech Eat Just, who has since its inception sold the vegan equivalent of 100 million eggs, but few Asian startups are also rising to the challenge, including India’s Evo Foods, French startup Les Merveilloeufs, and Singaporean firms Float Foods and OSomeFood.

Outside of the plant-based space, Clara Foods is “brewing” animal-free bioidentical egg proteins using precision fermentation, while Moolec Science is using a hybrid plant-based and cell-based approach to create alternatives for the meat, dairy and egg categories. 

All images courtesy of SavorEat.