No whey. Saaay!*
From Bloomberg, September 30:
A prolonged squeeze on America’s favorite protein powder is turning into an opportunity for food-tech companies that extract the macronutrient out of everything from alfalfa to bog microbes.
Leaft Foods has never been so busy. The New Zealand startup, which makes a protein shot extracted from alfalfa leaves, saw sales spike 600% in the year through June, says Chief Executive Officer Ross Milne — a big jump for a company operating a single demo-size production facility inside a Canterbury business park. “The market demand has increased beyond what anybody forecast,” Milne says. Now, Leaft is planning an expansion — maybe even a brand-new factory — to keep up.
Half a world away, Bay Area food-tech startup the Every Co. is riding a similar wave. Its fermented egg protein powder went viral on Reddit last December, and the company sold out its full 2026 capacity in the first six months of the year, it says. Customer orders are 10 times what they were last year.
For decades, whey has reigned supreme among the added protein in packaged foods or athletes’ shakes, thanks to its dissolvability, digestibility and sheer ubiquity. (Nearly 7 million tons of whey, a natural byproduct of cheesemaking, is churned out every year in the US alone.) But with diners wanting protein in almost everything they consume, from tortilla chips to cold brew, demand is outpacing supply, driving shortages and pushing up prices. That has opened the door for smaller startups trying to extract the macronutrient from other sources.
“Companies are now focused on protein diversification and supply chain resilience in a way they never have before,” says Every Co. founder Arturo Elizondo. In just the past few months, he says, companies using whey in their recipes seemed to suddenly realize the market is fragile and concentrated. “That’s been the big tailwind for us.”
Big food companies, with their deep pockets and established supply lines, have mostly been able to find the whey they need during the latest supply crunch. It’s the small businesses and those hoping to launch new high-protein products that are being pressed into using alternative ingredients. “I can’t tell you how many small brands have reached out to us saying they literally cannot source” whey, says Magi Richani, CEO of soy protein brand Alpine Bio. “They can’t get enough of it at any price.”
Investors and food giants alike have noticed the opportunity in non-whey options, and money is flowing into expanding production. Agricultural heavyweight Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. has teamed up with the Every Co. to help it quintuple production of its egg protein by about this time next year, while Alpine Bio was selected for snacking giant Mondelez International Inc.’s 2026 accelerator program, an eight-week course that, among other benefits, gives it access to the Oreo maker’s partners and mentorship. Crop-trading and food-processing giant Louis Dreyfus Co. just opened its first pea protein isolate production plant in Canada, while Swiss chemical giant DSM-Firmenich AG said in August it will produce its fermented single-cell protein on an industrial scale in Europe to compete with whey.
“Whey protein has been the incumbent for 30 years, nearly,” says Sean Torbati, co-founder of the Ambrosia Collective. The US company sells a line of supplements with a protein from supplier Solar Foods that’s made by fermenting a microbe originally discovered in Finnish bogs....
....MUCH MORE
*Note to self: keep an eye on Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
....A 2010 post reprised in 2014's "Ironically, Milk Futures Are Not Very Liquid":
We don't have many posts* on the dairy business, every couple years or so I break out the "What's Mooving" headline but the business, at least the way (whey?) it's structured in the U.S. is tough to trade from a portfolio perspective. In addition it seems to foment (ferment?) some simply awful puns in folks who write about it.
The futures are currently in backwardation, not that anyone cares....
*Back in 2010 we had a post, "CME Group expands dairy complex with cheese futures" which I intro'd with:Years ago I heard of a Chicago company that made a whey-based artificial cheese.
Apparently the operation was headed by a mad scientist type who had come up with the formula but had no marketing ability.
He was producing the stuff and not selling any, converting all the investors cash into this "analog" goop and storing it in Chicago area warehouses.
Then the Chernobyl reactor blew, the price of whey skyrocketed, I've no idea what the connection was, the company went broke and the receivers opened the warehouses to find tons of this 'cheeze', semi-molten in the summer heat.
That's what I thought of when I saw this story, tons of the stuff oozing out of bonded warehouses. No connection of course, just a visual....
As re-re-posted in December 2023's "HYDROCOW’s $6m project to make whey protein from CO2 & hydrogen: ‘It’s high-risk, high-reward’".
