BARCELONA, Spain--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Heura, Europe’s fastest-growing plant-based meat company, today launched Good Rebel Tech (G.R.T.), a new approach to food technology that will produce macro- and micro-nutrient dense foods in a sustainable manner that goes beyond what’s been technologically possible to-date. While there’s currently 1.3 billion tons of waste generated each year by the food industry globally, Heura’s Good Rebel Tech is spearheading a new and more sustainable food frontier, using non-utilized plant sources in their naturally-occurring structures.
By discovering new plant fractions and elucidating their structures at different scales, Heura’s R&D team, the TechRebels, have developed a new technological platform that exploits intrinsic plant properties to unlock healthier food options using simple, low-energy processes. “Instead of focusing on extracting and isolating proteins from legume seeds, we are researching ways to leverage the functionality of whole plants in their naturally occurring structures,” said Isabel Fernández, Heura Science & Technology Director. This unique approach enables the team to valorize micronutrients naturally present in the starting materials, and simply enhance its bioavailability when required, as opposed to including them as additive ingredients. This results in minimal and only physical processes being needed during product manufacturing, and avoids all chemical processing.
“By leveraging discoveries in cellular plant physiology, colloids and biopolymer science combined with computational fluid dynamics and engineering techniques, we’ve been able to create a technological platform that rewrites current plant-based food processing rules, and leads to a new sustainable manufacturing ecosystems,” continued Isabel Fernández, Heura Director of Science and Technology. “We are engaged in cutting-edge research in collaboration with world leading scientific experts to address the greatest technological challenges the plant-based industry is facing today.”
“Various industries ranging from energy to transportation have undergone critical technological transitions to increase sustainability, and now it’s the food industry’s turn,” said Food Activist, CEO and Heura Co-Founder Marc Coloma. “We’ve created Good Rebel Tech to pave the way for animal-meat successors that are derived directly from nature using low carbon-footprint technologies. Our aim is to leverage technology to provide holistic solutions that are more sustainable and nutritious than ever before.”
Looking ahead, Good Rebel Tech will be filing its first patents throughout 2022, covering the production of nutritionally superior plant-based products. Over the past year, Heura has quadrupled the size of its expert R&D team, and will launch up to 10 new products in 2022.
PRESS NOTES:
- Heura is a 100% plant-based meat start-up, founded by activists Marc Coloma and Bernat Añaños in April 2017. Its mission is to create solutions that make the current food system obsolete and accelerate the transition to a world in which animals are out of the protein production equation. Its Mediterranean culinary heritage is reflected in its products: extra virgin olive oil, clean label, high nutritional values and flavour. Currently, it is present in more than 13,000 points of sale in 20 countries around the world, including Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Egypt, Canada, Mexico, Chile and more.
- Photos for the media can be found here.
- Nearly 40% of global food industry waste occurs during manufacturing processes
