Global animal nutrition firm Nutreco announced a strategic partnership with lab-grown seafood startup BlueNalu as part of the company's aim to advance sustainability across the value chain.
“Our strategic partnerships are all designed to ensure Nutreco plays its part in ensuring there is enough sustainable food to feed the growing population," Nutreco CEO Rob Koremans said. "BlueNalu are developing very exciting technology that could potentially transform the way in which our industry feeds the future and we are thrilled to contribute to these developments."
This partnership helps bring a third option to the seafood supply chain, in addition to wild-catch and traditional aquaculture, BlueNalu CEO Lou Cooperhouse said.
However, Nutreco's core business will continue to focus on providing sustainable nutritional diets to customers.
The partnership with BlueNalu is made through Nutreco’s strategic innovation and investment team, NuFrontiers, and build on the research, ingredient sourcing and protein expertise of Nutreco subsidiaries Skretting and Trouw Nutrition.
Nutreco also partnered with cell-based meat startup Mosa Meat last week for similar reasons.
San-Diego based BlueNalu raised $4.5 million during its seed round of financing in 2018, to develop the methods to produce seafood directly from real fish cells, and has announced a five-phase commercialization strategy to scale up cell-based seafood production in the next five years.
On Wednesday, Good Catch, a plant-based seafood products brand owned by Gathered Foods, closed a $32 million (€28.6 million) funding round that included General Mills as one of the investors. The Series B funding pushed the total investment in the company so far to over $45 million (€40 million).
In a commentary this week, Executive Editor John Fiorillo questioned whether it's time for seafood companies to add alternative seafood to their branding strategy.
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