Inside BENEO’s new pulse plant: pioneering sustainable protein from faba beans
New technological platform that exploits intrinsic plant properties to unlock healthier food options
Heura, Europe’s fastest-growing plant-based meat company, has 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.
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.