Forsea swims into $5.2 million for its cultivated seafood
The startup’s technology helps make cultivated eel meat to address the destruction of marine life due to overfishing
Forsea Foods, a foodtech company based in Rehovot, has announced that it has raised a Seed round of $5.2 million for its organoid technology that produces cultivated seafood. The round was led by Berlin-based Target Global and also included participation from The Kitchen FoodTech Hub, PeakBridge VC, Zora Ventures, FoodHack, and Milk & Honey Ventures.
Forsea uses a non-GMO organoid platform where eel meat is grown ex vivo (“out of the living”) as a three-dimensional tissue structure in the same way it would grow in a living fish. The technology bypasses the scaffolding stage and requires fewer bioreactors, a process that is much simpler and cheaper than traditional cell culturing. The technology was developed by Iftach Nachman, Ph.D., co-founder of Forsea.
“We are very excited to announce the completion of this funding round,” said Roee Nir, CEO, a biotechnology engineer and co-founder of Forsea. “Our investors express their trust in our game-changing technology for producing seafood with a minimal footprint on the environment. The patented organoid technology allows us to contribute to a safe and more resilient food system consumers demand. We can produce a product identical in flavor, texture, appearance, and nutritional value to a real eel. The organoid platform allows us to design the fish fillet exactly as it grows in the fish, that is, in a three-dimensional structure, without growing the fat and muscle tissues separately.”
The funding will go towards growing cultivated eel meat which is in high demand due to sushi and kabayaki, a meal where fish is skewered and dipped into sweet soy sauce-based sauce before being grilled. Due to these meals being in such high demand, the eel has become an endangered species and the company is helping with the impact on marine life due to overfishing.
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“Forsea is poised to make a dramatic impact on the seafood ecosystem,” added Shmuel Chafets, Executive Chairman and founder of Target Global, whose investment in Forsea marks its first in the foodtech sector. “Its pillar platform solves a bottleneck in the cultivated meat industry by creating affordable, ethical, cultivated seafood products that can replace vulnerable fish species.”
Forsea was founded in 2021 by Nir, Nachman, and Yaniv Elkouby, Ph.D, with support from the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA) and The Kitchen Hub. The company will exhibit at FOODTECH IL 2022 in Tel Aviv on November 7 and expects to inaugurate its pilot plant in 2023, which will allow the company to create a design for large-scale alpha production systems and launch its first products.
