2023-11-27 09:34:28
On-site visit to the Berlin Adlershof Technology Park, the largest of its kind in Germany. One promising start-up resides here next to the next. If you want to find Tim Fronzek’s company Nosh Bio, you have to do a little searching. There are no large signs pointing to the revolution the company is planning. A few plain corridors, an office, a small laboratory with junk room charm. That’s it. But the enthusiasm shines through in the founder’s eyes.
Climate change is one of his biggest concerns. And that doesn’t just seem like it’s said. Fronzek is credibly concerned with the question of how climate-damaging emissions can be most effectively reduced. After extensive research, his answer is: with changes to your diet. Above all, less meat makes a lot of difference. And Tim Fronzek believes he has a wonderful key in his hand. He wants to save the world with a mold. The reserved 43-year-old wouldn’t put it so grandly. He’s not a windy salesman. But there is a grain of truth behind it.
Hardly distinguishable from real meat
After a few months of basic work, Nosh is about to achieve its first successes. At the Anuga, the largest food trade fair in the world, in Cologne at the beginning of October, a large number of people were able to taste what Nosh Bio soon wants to delight many with: meatless meat that can hardly be distinguished from real meat. More than 96 percent of around 2,000 testers found that the product could be recommended to others. There is a larger-than-life billboard in the Berlin Nosh office. A photo shows a plate on which five juicy pieces of supposed meat are deliciously draped. Next to the board, Fronzek quickly gets going with his arguments. He calculates that the food industry causes almost 30 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions. The main driver here is industrial factory farming.
There is no question: such findings are not new. They are attracting more and more manufacturers and more and more customers to the scene. Vegan alternatives to meat are booming. But their quality is nowhere near what it should be, Fronzek believes: “Everything I notice in terms of sensory properties, such as the mouthfeel, is far from animal products and not really appealing.” Added to this are the many additives that are necessary are used to make non-meat appear like meat: artificial starches or the wallpaper paste binder methylcellulose. In one of their first presentations, the Nosh Bio people compared the ingredients of a plant-based burger with those of a Nivea body lotion. “It was difficult to tell which label was for personal care and which was for food,” says Fronzek.
A mushroom for sake and miso – and much more
Nosh Bio wants to solve the problem with a filamentous fungus. The koji mushroom, with the Latin name Aspergillus oryzae, has long been used for fermentation in Japanese cuisine, including for the production of sake and miso paste. Nosh allows the mushroom to grow in a liquid nutrient medium. This results in a structure that is very similar to animal muscle tissue, as Fronzek explains. Well suited to replacing chemical binders. In addition, koji is one of the best-researched filamentous fungi: it can be marketed immediately without approval and is cheap to produce.
“I always say: The art of starting a company is to use the few successes that you generate to positively offset the many failures.” Sentences like this show: Tim Fronzek is certainly an idealist, but more than that Realist. This may also have contributed to his first major entrepreneurial success. Shortly after the turn of the millennium, out of college, he and friends started an online used goods store that focused on games and software. Over the years, this has developed into one of the largest European buying and selling platforms for electronics, books and media. Rebuy has just broken the sales mark of 200 million euros with more than 600 employees.
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