Standing Ovation Raises €3.75M in Series A+ Round, Appoints New CEO to Begin Animal-Free Casein Sales in 2025

French precision fermentation startup Standing Ovation has raised €3.75M in a Series A extension and appointed a new CEO to begin selling its Advanced Casein next year.

Parisian food tech startup Standing Ovation is gearing up for the launch of its animal-free casein protein with fresh capital and a new CEO.

The precision fermentation company has raised an additional €3.75M in a Series A extension, adding to the €12M it raised in the original round in 2022. The funds will be used to scale up production of Advanced Casein, its first patented product, ahead of a planned market launch in the US in 2025.

This will be helped by the expertise of Yvan Chardonnens, who has taken over the reins from co-founder Romain Chayot. Chardonnens is a seasoned C-suite executive who has worked at large firms like Oterra, Firmenich, IFF, Unilever, Barry Callebaut, and Roquette.

“I am excited to be joining such an innovative company at the forefront of its sector, with the potential to have a positive impact on our food ecosystems and deliver solutions to climate challenges,” Chardonnens said.

Standing Ovation plans to scale up Advanced Casein production

Standing Ovation is tackling casein, which makes up 80% of the protein content in milk and is responsible for many of the functional properties that make dairy desirable – like the melty and stretchy nature of cheese, or the creamy texture of ice cream. It’s a $2.7B market, but it’s a product of a carbon-heavy dairy industry.

The French startup is producing bioidentical casein – with the same amino acid sequence and nutritional credentials – but uses precision fermentation instead. Its technology and manufacturing processes are protected by seven patent families and have allowed it to establish strategic partnerships with prominent dairy players.

“Our caseins have the ability to provide essential functionalities such as foaming, thickening, curdling, stretching, as well as meeting taste objectives,” Chayot told Green Queen earlier this year, noting that the product can be used in products like animal-free cheese, yoghurt, ice cream, milk, and protein bars.

Advanced Casein, as the company calls it, is said to be a highly efficient solution to dairy’s climate footprint. According to an independent life-cycle assessment by Standing Ovation, its casein generates 94% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than its conventional counterpart, and enables the industry to make much better use of water and land.

The startup is finalising preparations for industrial-scale production by the end of 2024. At the beginning of the year, its weekly capacity was at several tens of kgs, but its efforts to scale up were boosted by a €3M cash infusion by the French government and the EU.

With the Series A+ round, Standing Ovation has now raised €23M since being founded four years ago, with investors like Astanor Ventures, Peakbridge, Seventure Partners, Good Startup and Big Idea Ventures.

Laetitia de Panafieu, an Astanor Ventures representative, called Standing Ovation “the only market player to have mastered fermentation casein production”. “Soon they will be able to produce on an industrial scale, meeting the needs of both the agrifood industry and consumers,” she said. “We are excited to see the first dairy products based on Advanced Casein distributed worldwide.”

Regulation and market entry key areas of focus

There are a number of companies working to produce animal-free versions of casein. Some – like New Culture, Change Foods, Fermify, Foodtive Group, and Zero Cow Factory – are similarly using precision fermentation, others are taking the molecular farming route (Alpine Bio, Finally Foods and NewMoo), and others (such as Pureture) are using yeast.

So far, New Culture is the only startup to have cleared the regulatory barriers for precision-fermented casein, achieving self-determined Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status in the US.

This is something Chardonnens also referenced, saying: “Our priority will be to step up our development by obtaining the necessary regulatory approval, strengthening our go-to-market strategy, and embarking on large-scale industrial production.”

He praised Chayot’s leadership, under whom the company “hit key technological, operational and financial milestones, paving the way for the next phase of industrial-scale growth”.

Chayot, now the managing director of the business, said Chardonnens has a pioneering reputation in “developing new products that meet both industrial challenges and consumer demand”. He added: “Our respective areas of expertise are a perfect fit, and will enable Standing Ovation to become the global leader in alternative proteins and a key player in the food transition.”

The Series A+ round comes amid a flurry of investments into fermentation startups in Europe, which have raised twice more money than plant-based and three times as much as cultivated meat companies this year. In the first half of 2024, the fermentation segment surpassed its funding total for 2023 in Europe, reaching €164M.

Since then, a host of companies have added to this pot. Onego Bio secured €14M, Adamo Foods brought in $2.5M, and Formo raised one of the biggest rounds of the year with $66M, among others.

Standing Ovation hopes to build on this momentum. “After four years of research and innovation to fine-tune our industrial manufacturing and production process, the time has come to accelerate towards mass production and distribution of Advanced Casein in the global agrifood market,” said Chayot.