Future of Food: This Company Just Opened the World’s First “Air Protein” Factory
Solar Foods’ revolutionary protein is made from a microorganism that can be cultivated with CO2 - meaning sustainable protein can be made from air.
The new air protein factory. Credit: Solar Foods
In the latest step towards the future of food, one company has launched what it calls the world’s first factory that can grow food out of thin air.
Key food industry players and innovative start-ups are racing to develop more sustainable methods to produce food for an ever-growing global population.
Some companies are leaning into traditional plant-based proteins like pulses, beans, and legumes. Others are creating ‘real’ cultivated meat, in a process that typically takes animal cells and cultivates - or grows - them in a laboratory setting, not dissimilar to the way that beer is fermented.
Now, Finland-based Solar Foods has announced its unique approach to making a more sustainable food system: growing protein out of air.
The company has just opened the world’s first air protein factory, based near the Finnish capital of Helsinki. At the facility, Solar Foods will operate a commercial-scale production of Solein, its signature air protein, which combines a tiny but mighty micro-organism with CO2 - known simply as air - to grow it into a nutritious yellow powder. The bioprocess is said to resemble winemaking.
Once the production cycle is complete, the resulting Solein powder can be used with a wide range of traditional ingredients - it’s already been made into limited-edition food products like a Solein-powered snack bar and a Solein chocolate gelato.
Solein powder. Credit: Solar Foods
At the new factory, Solar Foods estimates that it will be able to bring Solein’s annual production up to 160 tons.
“We will be able to deliver quantities that allow food producers for the first time to create large batches of Solein-powered products. While we have been able to offer consumers a small taste, finding a Solein-based food in your local supermarket has not been possible. Soon it will be”, Solar Foods’ CEO and co-founder Pasi Vainikka explains.
The Solein powder can be used in a variety of foods, like the above snack bar. Credit: Solar Foods
Cellular agriculture, where protein is produced in a factory-setting without killing animals, is also known as lab-grown or cultivated agriculture, and it is regarded as a leading solution to the world’s unsustainable demand for meat and the huge carbon footprint associated with meat production.
To put that in perspective, Solar Foods explains that the newly-built factory’s bioreactor can grow the same amount of Solein protein per day as a 300-cow dairy farm would produce milk protein. Crucially, the difference is that Solein can be produced by being “entirely decoupled” from the demands and environmental stress of traditional agriculture.
“It’s no longer a question of will cellular agriculture become a thing: it’s evident that it will”, Vainikka says. The CEO explains that “[the factory] demonstrates it is possible to grow protein from start to finish under one roof, year-round even in the harsh Northern conditions of Finland – and to do it all sustainably and in a commercially viable manner.”
It is expected that products using air protein will initially launch in Singapore, which was the first market to grant Solein regulatory approval. Solar Foods says it is also seeking authorizations in other markets across the world too.
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