A handful of startups are trying to reinvent one of the most ubiquitous, but also environmentally destructive, ingredients in our food: palm oil.
Palm oil is found in bread, instant noodles, Girl Scout cookies, lipstick, Nutella, and ice cream, to name a few. People all over the world use it daily for cooking. But to produce all that oil, countless miles of rainforests around the world – regions along the equator vital to biodiversity and the fight against climate change – have been razed, burned and transformed into plantations of oil palm trees. This has had deadly consequences for species like orangutans in Indonesia.
New companies are taking their technology out of the lab and turning it into real products. The material is made through fermentation (think breweries producing oils rather than beer) and is not yet approved for food use. But it’s starting to show up in areas like cosmetics.
These startups face an uphill battle. The world is so full of palm oil produced in the traditional way, by growing palm trees, that it is relatively inexpensive to purchase.
Food companies that use palm oil say they are trying to do better and are committed to creating more sustainable supply chains. However, while making a substitute in a lab may be less labor intensive than razing forests and tending millions of trees, to compete on price and volume, startups will need access to immense manufacturing facilities. For now, startups say, the products they sell are even more expensive.
I spoke to executives at three companies: Thomas Kelleher, chief executive of Xylome, maker of Yoil; Shara Ticku, chief executive and co-founder of C16 Biosciences, which makes Palmless (and counts Bill Gates among its investors); and Chris Chuck, co-founder of the UK-based Clean Food Group.
Here are their lightly edited responses.
How is your product made?
SHARA TICKU We produce an oil that looks and works like palm oil, but we make it from yeast, not trees. We consider it bio-engineered. It’s natural. It is grown in a laboratory, the same way beer or wine is grown in a laboratory.
CHRIS CHUCK We can take food waste, a carbohydrate source, and process it very simply, then feed it to the yeast.
TOM KELLEHER These yeasts, if we overfeed them with a lot of sugar, they get bigger. We overfeed them and they swell into a round ball made almost entirely of oil.
What motivated you to create your business?
TICKU I saw what was happening when I was in Singapore about 10 years ago. Smoke from Sumatran forest fires has reached Singapore and made the air toxic. Producing more palm oil requires completely changing the appearance of the planet.
MANDREL In addition to deforestation, the population is increasing, and not only do we have more and more people on the planet, but we also have a growing middle class in India and China, which demands more varied and nutritious products.
Will people get into it?
TICKU The components of our oil all exist in human food today. We have to go through approval stages with the Food and Drug Administration. And regulatory approval means it’s safe for widespread consumption.
Besides regulatory approval, what are the other obstacles to selling this product?
KELLEHER We need to produce at least 100,000 gallons per fermenter, and dozens and dozens of them. There are a limited number of companies in the world that have this capability. We are actively seeking a strategic partnership with at least one company capable of producing on an industrial scale and already familiar with the palm oil sector.
MANDREL We are talking about very large factories. For us, we can retrofit existing equipment like you find in breweries. You will then be able to evolve quickly.
What other uses do you envision for the technology?
KELLEHER I would love for us to have an alternative to fish oils, to shea butters, and we have a way to do that using the yeast platform that we’re working with. We are already developing a substitute for fish oil.
TICKU We work with food manufacturers to discover how our oil can improve their products. We can, for example, improve alternative cheeses. Our oil can help it melt better.
MANDREL We are trying to develop new technology to try to curb the growth of the edible oil sector in general. There are differences between us and other companies, but it’s not winner-takes-all. It’s bigger than a single company. We must solve a major, major challenge of the 21st century.