After spearheading the development of cultured meat dairy, Israeli biotechnology company Pluri Inc. announced last week that it has developed a process to produce cultivated coffee. This means growing coffee not in fields but in a laboratory, using advanced technology to multiply the original plant's cells. Pluri is among the first companies in the world and the only Israeli one to achieve this.
More stories:
The cultivated coffee is identical to regular coffee in taste and aroma and includes the same components, with notable advantages for sustainability and the environment: saving 98% of the water used for growing and producing plants and 95% of the cultivation areas dedicated to coffee worldwide.
Pluri, which specialized in cell growth and multiplication for 20 years in a variety of fields, from medicine to manufacturing, hopes to revolutionize the global coffee market. The coffee market currently earns around $130 billion annually and is expected to grow to $166 billion by 2029.
In recent years, the market has suffered from instability, mainly due to extreme climate changes in regions cultivating coffee. According to estimates, by 2050, 50% of current land will not be suitable for coffee cultivation. Additionally, the traditional coffee industry is a significant cause of dangerous greenhouse gas emissions.
Pluri plans to join leading coffee companies to establish a process for commercial production. For this purpose, a new subsidiary of the company will be established, headed by Michal Ogolnik, exclusively engaged in creating new technologies, solutions, and products for the coffee industry.
The Israeli company developed a unique cell multiplication technology called PluriMatrix, addressing one of the most significant challenges in the alternative food industry: the cost-effective production of cultured cells on an industrial scale.