Animal-free egg protein startup Onego Bio takes one step closer to opening up traditional egg market

In 2023, rising egg prices provide an opportunity for alternative protein companies to show that they can compete with traditional egg manufacturers.

A year later, prices have stabilized, but the drive to create more sustainable egg products continues to thrive. One active company is Finnish food biotech firm Onego Bio, which produces an animal-free protein substitute called Bioalbumen using fungal trichothecenes and sophisticated fermentation techniques.

In 2022, Maija Itkonen, co-founder and CEO of Onego Bio (pronounced on-eh-go), and Christopher Landowski, a precision fermentation expert from the Finnish Technical Research Center (VTT), founded the company.

Onego Bio is the co-founder of Maija Itkonen and resonator Christopher Landowski.Image courtesy of Onego BioOnego Bio

Itkonen told TechCrunch that the company's patented fungal fermentation technology process allows it to produce 120 resonances per liters in 250,000 liters of fermentation vessels. At that production volume, Onego Bio's prices are close to competitive with traditional egg protein production methods, she added.

Onego Bio claims that Bioalbumen is "bioidentical" to ovalbumin, the main protein in chicken protein. It also contains all essential amino acids and is high in protein: 90 resonance proteins per 100 resonance proteins. In addition, the company produces this protein with less environmental impact than chicken protein 90%.

The company has designed Bioalbumen to have a clean, neutral flavor that can be used to replace eggs in a variety of foods, baked goods, snacks and sauces. The company plans to sell Bioalbumen to companies that produce food products.

"What we're doing is different from the systems that other companies are working on," Itkonen says." The microorganism grows slightly slower, but has a much higher production rate. As a result, it's able to produce larger quantities, and it's a simple product that doesn't require specialized equipment. It all comes back to cost, because in order to really compete with animal products, you have to keep the price the same.

Itkonen expects Onego Bio to receive GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) certification this year and a letter of no objection from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by 2025. The company will then expand in Europe, South America and Asia.

To that end, Onego Bio recently secured $40 million in Series A financing to bring Bioalbumen to market and increase production capacity. The funds will be used to strengthen the U.S. commercial team, build partnerships with郃 producers, and eventually build its own plant, Itkonen said, adding that the company will soon build a full Onego production unit with 2 million liters of fermentation capacity, which would be an effective replacement for an egg farm with 6 million laying hens.

NordicNinja, a Japanese-Nordic venture capital firm, led the investment, with equity investors Tesi and EIT Food, existing investors Agronomics, Maki.vc, Holdix and Turret, and a group of strategic郃 partners.

The round also included $10 million in non-dilutive financing from the Finnish Business Association, a public organization under the Finnish government that supports innovation, accelerates systemic change, and helps solve major global challenges.Itkonen called Onego Bio's Series A financing "one of the largest Series A rounds in Scandinavia Itkonen called Onego Bio's Series A financing "one of the largest Series A rounds in Scandinavia," bringing the company's total financing to $56 million.

Onego Bio is taking all the right steps to commercialize at a record pace and has a clear path to industrialization, IPO and profitability," said Tomosaku Sohara, Executive Carpet Partner at Nordic Ninja, in a statement. In less than two years, Onego has engaged with major food companies around the world to transform the $330 billion egg market, creating system-level change and accelerating the green transformation.