Lab-made milk set to start pouring into Israeli dairy aisles, cafes

www.timesofisrael.com

An Israeli food tech startup says it will start selling its non-dairy, lab-produced milk made from dairy proteins at local supermarkets and retailers early next year, with the products set to start appearing at restaurants within weeks.

Remilk, a developer of cultured milk and dairy, said Monday it had partnered with Gad Dairies to start putting its products on shelves, bringing “cow-free milk” touted as identical to the real thing to Israelis.

From January, 3% fat milk and a vanilla-flavored milk made with Remilk’s non-animal protein and free of lactose, cholesterol, antibiotics, and growth hormones, will be sold at supermarket chains under the label “New Milk.”

A Barista milk line for the food service market is set to be available at cafés, restaurants, and hotels within days. Additional products in the milk series are expected to be launched in the coming months, Remilk said.

The company is also in talks to begin selling in the US.

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The announcement comes more than two years after Remilk received approval from the Health Ministry to market its milk, clearing its way to consumers’ coffee mugs and cereal bowls.

In September, the Strauss Group, one of the country’s largest food product manufacturers, announced that it would launch a new range of cow-free milk and cheese products using Imagindairy’s whey protein, produced via similar precision fermentation technology. It started selling a Yotvata cow-free drink and Symphony cow-free cream cheese this month.

Remilk’s prices are expected to be similar to other alternative milk products, such as soy or almond milk, but Remilk’s founders say their product is more like real milk than plant-based products.

Remilk co-founder and CTO Ori Cohavi at the food tech startup’s R&D lab in Ness Ziona. (Courtesy)

Remilk’s proteins are identical to traditional dairy proteins, allowing the creation of dairy products that match cow-produced milk in “taste, texture, and functionality,” Remilk’s co-founder and CTO Ori Cohavi explained.

“We believe that we have reached the level that we can claim it to be the new milk, which is something that required five years of developing at our R&D lab in Israel and $150 million in investment,” Cohavi told The Times of Israel. “It foams like regular milk, it tastes like milk, and behaves like milk, whether it is used for cooking or other applications.”

“This is something that you cannot do with other products that are currently available in the alternative dairy market,” Cohavi added.

The products contain 75% less sugar than regular cow-produced milk and are fortified with calcium and vitamins.

Founded in 2019, Ness Ziona-based Remilk produces animal-free milk proteins via a yeast-based fermentation process that renders them “chemically identical” in composition to those found in cow-produced milk and dairy products, resulting in a product that is almost 100% the same in taste, texture, and nutrition.

The startup says it recreates the milk proteins by manipulating a single-cell microbe to express a genetically identical protein. The product is then dried into a powder.

Remilk’s protein can be used in a variety of food products, including milk, ice cream, yogurt and cream cheese, that are free of lactose, cholesterol, antibiotics and growth hormones.

“We are not only working on milk, but also yogurt, cream cheese, and have additional products in the pipeline,” said Cohavi.

More than 90% of Israelis consume animal-based milk, and 61% of them also consume milk alternatives, according to a recent survey conducted by Remilk and Gad, together with the Geocartography Knowledge Group.

Israeli food tech startup Remilk, together with Gad Dairies, launches drinks made with its cow-free milk protein. (Courtesy)

The survey, examining Israeli attitudes toward milk and milk alternatives, found that 66% of Israelis maintain separation between meat and dairy (in accordance with kosher dietary laws).

As Remilk’s products are made without real dairy, the products are kosher-parve and vegan-friendly.

“Our new milk products are good news for many consumers who keep kosher and can now drink coffee with parve milk after a meat meal that tastes like real milk,” said Remilk co-founder and CEO Aviv Wolff.

Remilk has received regulatory approvals to produce and sell cow-free milk products from health authorities in Singapore and the United States.

“After Israel, we are planning for our next market, to go to the US, where we are already in quite serious partnership talks with large players,” Cohavi said.

The dairy alternative market is expected to grow from about $32 billion in 2024 to $57 billion by 2030, according to a report by research firm Research and Markets. The market is currently dominated by plant-based beverages made from soy, almond, coconut, oats, hemp, and other non-animal materials.

There are a number of other companies also operating in the dairy alternative space for milk proteins using precision fermentation technology, including Imagindairy, which says its technology recreates nature-identical, animal-free versions of whey and casein proteins that can be used to produce dairy duplicates.