Our investors include Xavier Nielʼs Kima Ventures, Silicon Valley business angel Jerome Lecat, Khaled Helioui (investor of Uber and Deliveroo), Sylvie Ganter and Christophe Cervasel (Atelier Cologne), crowdfunding equity platform Anaxago and business angel community Angelsquare and Angelor. Top-ranked French business angel Cyril Grislain (Devialet, Scality, Stripe, Tempow, Agricool) has supported nextProtein since inception, and serves as a board member.

Growing public awareness of the health and environmental benefits of plant protein is causing a major shift in the protein market. Alfa Laval is playing an active part in the development of the vegetable protein industry, supporting global food companies, startups, and research institutions with expert advice and market-leading processing solutions. Building on our long history of working with traditional protein and starch producers, we create sustainable and reliable solutions for the future.

Rising demand for alternative proteins calls for reliable wet fractionation processes that boost purity, nutritional value and yield, of protein isolates while reducing consumption of energy and water. Sustainable plant-based protein processing systems from Alfa Laval deliver reliable performance and reduce environmental impact while ensuring protein stability, appearance, texture, taste and nutritional value.

The catalyst was Syrine&#;s experience working in some of the world’s poorest nations combined with Mohamed&#;s entrepreneurial ambitions. On a program in Madagascar, which had been hit by natural disasters and food shortage, a locust plague decimated crops and livestock pastures while the people went hungry. Having witnessed the incredible ability of insects to create protein – which could feed livestock and therefore the population – the couple realised their dream for more sustainable industrial farming practices, using the life cycle of the Black Soldier Fly, fed on organic waste.

Like most start-ups, nextProtein began in a garage back in . It was born from the personal and professional ambitions of its founders, who were searching for solutions to change agricultural food production while being able to work and live together. Syrine, an Emergency Operations Specialist at the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, and Mohamed, a Grammy-nominated chemical engineer, identified that they could combine organic cycles of nature with the scalable efficiency of technology, to produce an alternative to wasteful and unsustainable agricultural systems.