Cows producing milk can be tough on the atmosphere but a Quebec company is hoping to market a more environmentally friendly dairy product.

Opalia recently closed a $3.2 million round of funding after pioneering a process that produces real cow’s milk from bovine mammary cells. However, obtaining growth capital remains the biggest challenge for the nascent firm.

“I would say our biggest headwinds right now are funding. Cell-based meat has gotten a little bit of a backlash in the last few years because of how much money was invested, and how little return for that money investors were seeing,” Jennifer Côté, co-founder said to FoodNX.

“I think it’s somewhat unfair. I think it’s just because investors are more used to investing in software and things that generate more investment rapidly than deep tech.”

$6 million raised so far

Despite these headwinds, Opalia is “pretty fortunate,” in what they have received, according to Côté.

“We’ve received a lot of non-diluted funding from the Canadian government; raised about $6 million to date. We’ve made quite a lot of progress with the little money we’ve raised.”

While this new round is welcome, the company is still looking for more financial partners to join before mid-July, she said.

The process essentially removes the actual cow from the production of the milk and milk-based dairy products.

“It all starts by taking a small biopsy from the cow udder. We take a small quantity of cells that doesn’t hurt the cow: we don’t have to kill the cow. Our cells are then immortalized, and then the cells undergo two main steps: the growth stage, where they duplicate and reach millions, billions of numbers,” Côté explained.

Then, the cells are fed salt, sugars, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, “really the basic building blocks of what we eat every day,” she said.

From there, a protein called prolactin is introduced.

“Prolactin is normally secreted by the brain but now we just add it to the media, and that’s really the trigger for the cells to be able to start making milk.”

Indistinguishable from traditionally created milk

The next step is waiting for about two weeks and then the cells are able to produce milk for months.

“We harvest milk every day, and the milk is identical to real milk. It has the same protein, the same fat, same lactose, vitamins, minerals, and from there, we’re then able to generate other dairy products, like cheese, butter, ice cream, really, anything,” Côté said.

Today, the company is at the pre-commercialization stage, with the next leg moving from research scale to pilot scale.

“Currently, it’s more of a laboratory. We’re renting space out of a university in Montreal so we don’t need much space. We have about 4,500 square feet,” she said.

Opalia is hoping to come to market in the next few years, ideally by 2029.

To help accomplish this it has partnered with Dutch firm Hoogwegt, the world’s largest privately owned dairy ingredient provider, according to its website.

“There’s a lot of interest in our product because for Hoogwegt specifically, the Netherlands is quite a small country, and they have a lot of laws against generating more methane emissions for their food and agriculture industry.”

“So, they’re interested in increasing their capacity of production while not generating more emissions. That’s why they are both an investor and a commercial partner,” Côté said.

Partnering with Hoogwegt will also help Opalia “increase trust in our product. Because it’s a new technology, we want our customers to feel comfortable purchasing from known companies that they trust,” she said.

“Co-branding products with big dairy companies would be a way that we could still control some of the narrative and communication around what is cell-based milk and where it comes from.”

The firm also has to undergo a 12-to-16-month process of obtaining regulatory approval from La Régie des marchés agricoles et alimentaires du Québec (RMAAQ) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) before reaching commercialization.

Ability to customize end product

Because of the unique process, Opalia’s milk also lends itself to producing milk with different properties, she said.

“It’s the same as what’s currently made by cows but we have a high potential for customization in our process, because we have full control over what the cell produces. In the future, we could have a fully customizable milk that includes high-protein milk; low-lactose milk.”

“We can have different specifications for our customers as well,” Côté said.

The non-dairy product also doesn’t have to be produced in ideal climates, she explained.

“I think there’s definitely huge potential for us to ensure safe access to sustainable protein, not only North America, but elsewhere in countries that are limited by climate. Our technology can be made in the city but it can also be made in the desert because it’s not climate dependent.”

“I think there’s a lot of potential for that.”