Tomer Eisen CEO Wilk (Photo by Danny Bachar)
Pentecost has long been known as Dairy Day, but today with growing awareness of animal rights, along with the environmental damage attributed to responsible animal husbandry, 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, growing interest in the food-tech industry and food substitutes considered a leader in Israel, and in short, It seems that this year it is possible to congratulate “the land of high-tech waste and engineered milk.”
One of the leading companies in the field is Wilk, an Israeli food-tech company that is considered one of two companies in the world that owns technology for the production of cultured dairy components (production based on live cells of animals), and the first in the field to go public.
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As an Israeli pioneer, it attracts a lot of attention in the media and the local public, it reported last April on a “scientific breakthrough,” and is traded at a value of more than NIS 87 million. However, if you are a vegan who can no longer wait to enjoy a dessert without guilt, or mothers hoping to stop breastfeeding, the road there is still long.
In a conversation with the company’s founder Prof. Nurit Gov Argaman and CEO Tomer Eisen – we make an order: what exactly products do they intend to supply to the market, how is the technology different from competing companies and why it will take time until we can give up dairy without giving up milk?
“The technology we established in a research lab at the Faculty of Agriculture said we could take cow’s udder cells, grow them in plastic plates, and make them produce some milk components: certain proteins, milk sugar and fat. The company made a process to enter the stock market, and part of the process was milestones we committed “And it had economic significance, another division for shareholders.”
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“I can not stand behind the words ‘scientific breakthrough.’ It has commercial significance for the company. ”
So what’s groundbreaking after all? This is not a tap that produces milk, and this is not a magic change but a significant business achievement, as reflected last April, when the company announced a “scientific breakthrough”, and the stock jumped 8% in one day. However, the company has certainly succeeded in confirming in independent laboratories of the Technion and the Weizmann Institute the technology based on many years of research, and the company’s CEO Tomer Eisen explains that the patent based on growing and feeding human breast cells and animal udder cells, allows components to be produced. Unique and essential nutrition that could not be produced until now, except through milking.
“There are cells in their natural anatomy that produce milk, and get more sources from the blood, antibodies, certain fluids. A cell you take it out of its source is behaving a little differently. The way we feed the cells in the lab, which is one of our patents, causes it to secrete a certain component ” Explains Eisen.
The “Wilk” team. Photo: Danny Bachar
So if it is not a ‘udder machine’ that produces milk, why are these components (including: fat, protein and lactose) that the company has been able to produce so important? Raw cow’s milk contains only about 3.5% fat, which is also the most expensive and sought-after part of the liquid. The fat is used to make most dairy products on the market, such as butter, ice cream, and cheese. So the Niger milk (milk drink) and milk powders used for the confectionery industry are only a small part of the market, and it is not for nothing that the products are considered more expensive and fine the higher the percentage of fat – to produce one kilogram of hard cheese, such as: yellow cheese, required 10-9 “Liters of raw milk, on the other hand,” one kilogram of yogurt or Niger milk produces from one liter of raw milk. ”
For example, many people probably remember the panic, with the shortage of butter that plagued us two years ago, and was due in part to the heat waves and climate change that affected the biology of the cows, and among other things harmed the percentage of fat in the milk they produce. This is also probably one of the reasons that led the beverage giant “Coca-Cola”, which owns the subsidiary “Terra”, to invest last July, about $ 2 million in “Wilk” and sign an exclusivity contract with it.
“Milk consists of 87 percent water, 3 percent fat, 4 percent protein and the rest sugars and minerals. If we supply the industry with the proteins and sugars, it can be made into milk. But will the interest be to produce milk? I do not think. It will be possible to produce products. “Milk that has added value. Make ice cream, make cheese. Yoghurts. Not necessarily Niger milk, I believe the industry will direct it to other products. The potential once you get to milk ingredients, is endless. Some vehicles can go to cosmetics for nutritional supplements,” says Eisen. .
Another innovation that the company notes is an advancement in research that will allow them to stop relying on “donations” of cells. “We are growing our own cell bank, and soon we will not need donations of cells from women and animals. Our cell bank is completely independent. We know how to replicate the cell,” Eisen describes.
Although the company has already shown that it is capable of producing the components, it has another way to go, for the technology to be efficient enough (scalability) for large-scale industrial production, as well as complex health certificates and bureaucracy, especially in the field of baby food.
“We have set ourselves a goal to enter the market in 2024, and we are making great efforts to meet that,” the CEO promises. The first vehicles to enter the market will be part of Terra products. First of all, not sure there is a line for vegans, because it is still difficult to talk about changing barns in the foreseeable future.
“It’s like comparing, apple to date, the technology is completely different. When you want to produce a cheese product, for a hump, you need two main things protein and fat. Protein they are known to produce, but what about the other ingredients? You can not bring the fat, fermentation (fermentation process from the plant “In the mouthfeel, it is impossible to replace the fat, even from a nutritional point of view, the fat in milk has very, very important nutritional values.”
Alongside the dairy market, it seems that a major advantage of “Wilk” lies in the baby food market. In general, the World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding infants up to six months of age with breast milk only. Many studies show that infants who breastfed received higher scores on subsequent intelligence tests, and that breastfed infants were at lower risk of being overweight and diabetic in the future, compared to those who received supplements. Despite this, more than 40% of women in Israel do not breastfeed for the entire recommended period, and the company hopes that they can improve existing food substitutes.
“Today the formula for babies contains ingredients that come in contact with animals, cows or plants. We will be able to provide them with the fat that is secreted from human breast cells, and replace the palm fat that exists in the formulas.
Another question that remains open is whether “Wilk” and other technologies in the field will lower prices, at least in the distant future on the assumption that they will be able to optimize the technologies. Today many costs and resources of space and food are required to raise cows that produce milk only in certain months and with high percentages of water. At the same time, the dairy market is considered one of the most centralized and monopolistic markets in Israel, with three main companies: Terra, Tnuva and Strauss, which together control more than 80% of it. Along with Tara, which we have already mentioned, Tnuva is invested in Remilk, and Strauss recently invested in Imaginary, both Israeli companies that are developing technology for the production of plant milk protein.
“Today we can not yet say that our technology is cheaper than the traditional dairy industry. We invest a lot of resources to lower the price of a glass. In the first stage we will want to make products that have higher values. In the breast milk arena, the price issue is not a factor at all. “We bring to the table technology that changes the rules of the game. There is price awareness, we will try to be as efficient as possible to penetrate the market, competitively.”