Berlin, Germany-based Bluu Seafood expects its cell-cultured seafood products to be in supermarkets by 2025.
The company said it plans to target the U.S. and Singapore markets, as they are the two countries with the shortest duration of time for the approval of cell-based food products, according to Vegconomist.
Bluu Seafood focuses on plant-based and cell-cultured seafood products. It is one of the first companies to create the products in Europe, and it had a succesful EUR 7 million (USD 7.1 million) funding round in March 2021.
Bluu Seafood COO Christian Dammann said he is optimistic about the commercialization process for his company's cell-cultured seafood. Cell-cultured seafood is currently only available for public sale in Singapore. Dammann said he expected his company will make its first cell-cultured seafood products available for purchase in either the U.S. or Singapore by 2025.
Dammann described the company's cell-based seafood cultivation process as very similar to growing beer yeast or making yogurt, and not requiring genetic modifications or cell transformations, but he said it still requires an extensive regulatory process that has taken longer to obtain approval than many other products under review by food safety authorities.
The process, according to Dammann, is to “isolate the fish cells, provide them with nutrients that they would also receive in a living fish, and let them grow. That is all."
"Other ingredients we may use in addition to fish cells in our products are known materials from plants or algae that are common in other foods. Bluu products do not contain artificial colorants or flavors. So, we keep it simple and clean," he said.
Dammann said Bluu Seafood recently joined forces with Chinese partners to prepare in preparation of a submission for regulatory approval in China.
Photo courtesy of Bluu Biosciences
