Company Makes ‘Ultra-Realistic’ Vegan Meat Using Tech Inspired By Textile Manufacturing

A food tech start-up has raised USD $15.6 million in financing to scale up production of its “ultra-realistic” plant-based meat.

Project Eaden, based in Berlin, uses proprietary fiber spinning and compounding technology to replicate meat’s texture with plant proteins such as wheat, pea, and fava bean.

The funding will help Project Eaden to launch its range of “ham” across stores of the German retail giant REWE in mid-2025. REWE, along with others including environmental venture capital firm Planet A, have invested in the company.

Project Eaden’s technology was “inspired by the textile industry,” according to the company. The process uses a spinneret, the type of device that produces fibers used to make clothes and other materials. To make meat from plant proteins, it produces fibers in variable shapes and sizes and with various properties. Using its compounding tech, Project Eaden then connects the fibers together in different ways to make particular kinds of “meat.”

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Co-founder Jan Wilmking, who was previously a fashion executive, told Ag Funder News that plant proteins are round, while animal muscle fibers are more like strings. “So we need to unfold them before putting them together in a shape and solidifying that,” he said.

Scalable tech

According to Project Eaden, its fiber spinning method creates “ultra-realistic plant-based meats with look, taste and chew matching animal meat quality.” It says that its products are also healthier than meat from animals and better for the environment. Its hams are nitrate-free and produced “at a fraction of the environmental cost” of processed pig products.

“Every kilogram of Project Eaden’s product reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 20 kg CO2-eq – equivalent to driving about 100 kilometers in an average fossil fuel car,” the company says. In addition to ham, Project Eaden is developing products including sausages, pork loins, and beef steaks.

Importantly, its tech “is versatile across meat types, cheap and highly scalable,” co-founder Dr. David Schmelzeisen, said in a statement.

According to Ag Funder News, the company currently has two spinning machines which can produce about 200 kg of plant-based meat fibers a day. It is now aiming to expand with its fresh funding, including building bigger machines. “If you look into the world of fiber spinning, there are some gigantic machines out there,” Wilmking said.

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