Led · Seed · Apr 2024

Time Travelling Milkman focuses on extracting and commercialising functional ingredients from sunflower seeds, most notably OleoCream, a plant-based fat-globule emulsion that provides a rich, creamy mouthfeel. The company has also created OleoPowder and SunPulp, valorising the remaining seed fractions to maximise circularity. Its newly announced project targets scaling OleoCream production to 10,000 tonnes per year while utilising all side streams. A consortium with co-product specialist Duynie and process-optimisation expert NIZO Food Research will help develop clean-label, climate-friendly applications and fine-tune manufacturing processes. The initiative is additionally supported by EFRO Oost, an EU-co-funded subsidy programme. An undisclosed investment has been secured to finance these scale-up efforts, but no revenue or user figures have been revealed. The company’s strategy centres on delivering sustainable, dairy-like functionality for the growing plant-based foods market.

Participated · Equity · Aug 2023

Clean Food Group develops and manufactures functional oils and fats via its proprietary CLEAN OilCell™ fermentation platform, producing CLEAN Oil™ and CLEAN Fat™ from food waste feedstocks using scalable yeast strains. Founded in 2022 after eight years of research, CFG has validated its manufacturing process at scale and acquired a one million-litre fermentation facility in Knowsley, Liverpool in 2025. Its CleanOil™ 25 product received approval for use as a cosmetics ingredient in the UK, US and Europe in 2025. The company has strategic and industrial collaborations with leading FMCG and ingredients manufacturers, including Döhler Group, and reports a strong demand pipeline. The recent £4.5 million investment plus a £700,000 Innovate UK grant are intended to fund completion of the Knowsley scale-up, expand capacity and accelerate commercialisation of its products.