Cultimate Foods: Interview with Eugenia Sagué on the Future of Meat Alternatives

We sat down with Eugenia Sagué, co-founder and CEO of Cultimate Foods, to learn more about the food tech company based in Hannover and Berlin, and the next generation of meat alternatives. Eugenia provides fascinating insights into the inspiration behind the company’s founding, the technology of their products, and the challenges they face in development and scaling.

What inspired you to found Cultimate Foods?

Eugenia Sagué: From our professional experience, we know that there is still no perfect solution for meat alternatives. We believe that with products that taste better, acceptance will increase significantly. We can deliver the meaty taste that consumers want, while helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and minimise factory farming.

Can you tell us more about the technology behind your products?

Eugenia Sagué: Our CultiFat is a cultivated ingredient made with cell-cultivated animal fat cells (porcine and bovine fat cells). It offers a natural lipid profile that enhances the flavour and juiciness of plant-based meat alternatives even in small amounts. This minimises unwanted flavours and supports clean-label formulations, i.e. food products with transparent, short and comprehensible lists of ingredients, by replacing additives and enabling seamless integration into existing production processes.

What challenges do you face in the development and scaling of your products?

Eugenia Sagué: The biggest challenges in scaling up our products are the high costs of cell culture media and the design of bioprocesses. Culture media account for more than 30% of production costs. They must be food-grade, animal-friendly and economical. This means striking a balance between costs and the needs of the cells.

Uncertainties regarding innovation, regulatory approvals and the need for partnerships with specialised companies pose a risk. To overcome this challenge, it is necessary to work with media experts, focus on tailored media formulations (adapted to specific cell types) and eliminate non-essential components that drive up costs.

Scaling up from 1-litre to 10,000-litre bioreactors is anything but easy. If that doesn’t work, we could also pursue a ‘scale-out’ strategy with smaller bioreactors, while maintaining the cell metrics for greater efficiency. And to overcome these challenges, we need pilot validations and must also take advantage of advances in cell technology.

How do you see the future of meat alternatives?

Eugenia Sagué: I believe that hybrid products will dominate the market soon. Plant-based products will be refined with cultivated animal fat as a flavour carrier. The ingredient we are developing, based on cultivated fat, could play a central role in these new products.

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs in the food technology sector?

Eugenia Sagué: Follow your passion—that’s my most important piece of advice!