In 2023, higher egg prices provided an opportunity for alternative protein companies to show they could compete with traditional egg producers.
A year later, prices have calmed down, but the flurry of activity to create more sustainable egg products continues to thrive. One place seeing a flurry of activity is Onego Bio, a food biotech company based in Finland that is using the fungus Trichoderma reesei and precision fermentation to create an animal-free egg white alternative called Bioalbumen.
Maija Itkonen, co-founder and CEO of Onego Bio (pronounced on-eh-go), spun off the company with precision fermentation specialist Christopher Landowski from VTT (Technical Research Center of Finland) in 2022.
Onego Bio co-founders Maija Itkonen and Christopher Landowski. Image Credits: Onego Bio
Itkonen told TechCrunch that the company’s patented fungal fermentation technology process allows it to produce 120 grams per liter in 250,000 liter fermentation vessels. With this capability, Onego Bio is close to reaching competitive price points in traditional ways of making egg proteins, he added.
Onego Bio claims that bioalbumin is “bioidentical” to ovalbumin, which is the main protein in chicken egg white. It also contains all the essential amino acids and has a high protein content: 90 grams per 100 grams of egg white. In addition, the company can produce it with a 90% smaller environmental footprint compared to eggs from chickens.
The company manufactures Bioalbumen to have a clean, neutral taste that can be used to replace eggs in various foods, pastries, snacks and sauces. The company plans to sell Bioalbumin to companies that will then create the food products.
“What we’re doing is different than, for example, the systems that other companies are working on,” Itkonen said. “The microorganism grows a little slower, but the productivity is much, much higher. Thus, it produces more output and the product is simple as it does not require specialized equipment. It all comes back to cost because for animal products to be truly competitive, they have to be at the same price.”
The company will launch first in North America. Itkonen expects Onego Bio to receive self-confirmed GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status for Bioalbumen this year and a no-objection letter from the US Food and Drug Administration in 2025. It will then follow with expansion into Europe, South America and Asia.
In preparation for this, Onego Bio recently secured $40 million in Series A funding to bring Bioalbumen to market and increase production capacity. The funds will be used to grow the US commercial team and work with co-manufacturers while it completes its own factory. The company is nearing a single, full-scale Onego production facility with a fermentation capacity of 2 million liters, which will effectively replace an egg farm with 6 million laying hens, Itkonen said.
Japanese-Nordic venture capital firm NordicNinja led the investment with the participation of equity investors Tesi and EIT Food, existing investors Agronomics, Maki.vc, Holdix and Turret and a group of strategic partners.
The round also includes $10 million in non-dilutive funding from Business Finland, a public organization under the Finnish government that supports innovation to accelerate systemic change to solve major global challenges. Itkonen claims Onego Bio’s Series A funding is “one of the largest A rounds in Scandinavia” and brings the company’s total funding to $56 million.
Tomosaku Sohara, managing partner of Nordic Ninja said in a statement: “Onego Bio is taking all the right steps to commercialize in record time… with a clear path to industrialization, commercialization and profitability. In less than two years, Onego is already partnering with major global food companies and poised to disrupt the $330 billion egg market and create system-level change, accelerating the green transition.”
