Perfect Day Foods Partners to Change Dairy Protein
Last week, Perfect Day Foods announced a partnership with food company Archer Daniels Midland. Based in Berkeley, California, Perfect Day is a startup that uses cellular agriculture to produce animal-free dairy proteins. By designing yeast to produce the same dairy proteins found in milk from a cow, Perfect Day can make the same milk. Without needing the cow.
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is one of the world’s largest agricultural processors and food ingredient companies. According to Perfect Day, ADM’s expertise in scaling fermentation production made them the perfect partner to help Perfect Day get their first product to market. ADM also has past experience working with companies in the alternative protein space. In October, ADM Ventures invested in cell ag startup Geltor’s $18.2 million Series A round to scale production of their animal-free collagen protein.
Perfect Day co-founder Ryan Pandya shared that their first product will be an animal-free whey protein. Whey protein has many uses, such as a sports nutrition powder or in dairy products. Since this whey is produced in an animal-free manner, Perfect Day’s whey protein could be suitable for people with plant-based diets. Perfect Day plans to focus on scaling different dairy proteins before developing an animal-free dairy milk.
Consumers will have the first chance to see their whey protein as early as next year! Perfect Day initially plans to sell their product as an ingredient to companies in the food and beverage industry to bring a variety of animal-free dairy products to market.
In this way, by being an ingredients supplier, Perfect Day aims to be like Intel of the food space. A credible, reputable brand name found in many products that stands for a nutritious, high-quality protein product.
Perfect Day’s partnership with ADM marked off an incredible week and year for the company. Through their new partnership, Perfect Day will be one of the first food cell ag products out. Earlier last week, Perfect Day co-founders Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi were named in Forbe’s 30-Under-30 list. In February, Perfect Day raised $24.7 million for their Series A round. According to Pandya, this was one of the largest Series A funding rounds ever for a foodtech startup.
My name is Ahmed Khan, and I am the Editor of CellAgri. Please subscribe to my email newsletter at www.cell.ag to get the latest research and news, which I share exclusively with my email subscribers. We are regularly tweeting out interesting articles and thoughts via twitter @Cellagritech