In the effort to replace traditional seafood with alternatives, based in Berlin Pacifico Biolabs believes he has a unique approach to creating entire muscle structures using fermentation.
While fermentation, the process of growing cells in bioreactors, is already used to produce some alternative proteins, such as cultured meat, Zac Austin, co-founder and CEO, calls the process “a complete game changer.”
Prior to Pacifico Biolabs, Austin was at McKinsey in London as a strategy consultant. After working for the UK government’s COVID task force, he met co-founder Washington Logroño, who immigrated to Europe from Ecuador for graduate studies in biotechnology.
“The fermentation we often hear about is better at producing raw products,” Austin told TechCrunch. “Seafood is such that it is so fragmented that you need different technological approaches to cover different types of products. We produce a highly nutritious biomass and our formulation works well for white fish fillet products.”
The company’s fermentation process involves growing multiple microorganisms, including mycelium (mushroom root), to provide nutrition, flavor and texture. Pacifico Biolabs also uses lateral currents from other food productions to reduce food waste. In addition, infrastructure is a large capital expenditure for fermentation, so the company is building a new production process.
Pacifico Biolabs launched from stealth today with $3.3 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Simon Capital and FoodLabs and included Exceptional Ventures and Sprout & About Ventures.
The startup is the latest to attract venture capital investment for alternative seafood. It’s an area that saw a lot of movement in early 2023 from companies like ISH Company, New School Foods, Aqua Cultured Foods and Bluu Seafood. Investors also called that year where there will be remarkable strides in alternative seafood.
Aquablurba Fish Site newsletter after investing in aquaculture and alternative seafood, reported $808 million in venture capital in 56 rounds going public in 2023.
As the pre-seed round suggests, Pacifico Biolabs is still in very early stages. Therefore, the new capital will be used to scale up the fermentation process and launch the first products on the European market after regulatory approval.
For now, the company will work on optimization and tweaks that Austin said can only be made at a higher scale. When the company upgrades, it will be able to develop its seafood alternatives at a lower cost than cheaper farmed fish, Austin said.
“It’s about creating a practical model that’s easy to scale,” he said. “It can be done at low cost, which means it will be economically viable for everything from chicken to, say, mayonnaise. Beyond seafood is definitely part of what I would say is our 10-year plan.”
