Arik Kaufman, Co-Founder and CEO, Steakholder Foods (NASDAQ:STKH)
Arik Kaufman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Steakholder Foods (NASDAQ: STKH). In his 2,929 word interview, exclusively in the Wall Street Transcript, Mr. Kaufman relates how his company has essentially created the first Star Trek Replicator.
“The food industry is evolving like other industries. And one thing that is common to the interest of all of us, I think, is feeding the population.
The population is growing.
You have a middle class in certain countries that were non-existent a few years ago.
And someone needs to feed these people with quality alternatives.
And we come into the game by showcasing very advanced hardware that is currently used in other sectors, such as in the pharmaceutical sector, and try to harness these advanced capabilities to create amazing products.
Products that you could not imagine in the past that you can create…in 2021 we were the first company that 3D printed the largest cultured steak ever printed.
Cultured steak, meaning a steak that contained only live cells that were grown outside of the animal.
It was a 100-gram steak.
Since then, we’ve focused mainly on creating the printer and not the biological capabilities.
And today, we have already announced a few agreements that we have here in Israel and some collaborations abroad.
And we are able to mimic the texture and the taste of meat as we know it, but with plant-based ingredients.
Through 3D printing capabilities, we know how to create textures and structures that are very difficult to create at mass scale and at a cost-effective way versus other methods that are out there today.”
Steakholder Foods (NASDAQ: STKH) creates these fake steaks using a proprietary 3-D printing method.
“…the machines that are out there today, they are like machines that have been used for many, many years. And they are very limited with the structures that they create.
If I try to simplify it, think about how the outbound will always be the same as the inbound, meaning that if you have a burger, for instance, the burger inside is exactly the same as it is outside.
The 3D printing enables you to create layering.
You can determine each layer.
You can 3D print each layer by layer, and each layer can be different.
And then through layering, you can create textures and structures that are not out there today.
Assume that you haven’t eaten a whole-cut plant-based steak.
The reason that you haven’t eaten it is because it’s very difficult to create.
So, you can create it like a concept product, like in a certain restaurant, but if you want to create things at mass scale, and that’s the key, you need machines.
You need very advanced machines that will be able to create the same product systematically without any diversification.
And it’s supposed to be at a price and at a cost and at a pace that is competitive.
And I think that’s the main advantage of 3D printing.
If you think about the next level, in the future, you can integrate these premixes, these plant-based blends, with cultured ingredients.
Then you can create more sophisticated products, as we did in the past, but we did it more as a proof of concept to show that we are able to create steaks that are 100% cultured.
In the future, you will be able to do it in a cost-effective way.
You can blend species, for instance, with the printer.
You can blend species with other species, determine exactly how the matrix of the steak will be.
The possibilities are endless and it’s very transparent.
You know exactly what you put into the printer.
In the animal world, there are a lot of diseases, you don’t really know what the animal went through before it was slaughtered.
Here, everything is transparent.
It’s very stable.
And I think that it’s the future.”
Steakholder Foods (NASDAQ: STKH) strives to create and maintain this proprietary advantage.
“Since our establishment, we’ve set the bar as high as possible.
When we started the company, we stated that within two years, we will try to 3D print the first cultured meat steak, 100% cultured, with our own printer.
If you reference the whole cultured meat industry, in 2013, Professor Mark Post created the first cultured burger.
It cost him something like EUR200,000 or EUR300,000.
That’s what they said.
And we tried to set the bar as high as possible.
Within two years, we already have the hardware capabilities and the biological capabilities to create this first whole-cut 3D printing steak.
And I think that the fact that we’ve achieved it — and because we are public we announced that we’ve achieved it — I think that allowed us to downgrade the capabilities to machines that are capable potentially of 3D printing the whole cultured steak as we did, but it allowed us to create a diversified range of machines that already today can create very interesting and very exciting products, but at a price that is at a level that can be sold in grocery stores.
Because to create a concept that is not competitive with other alternatives out there, it only shows capabilities, but it’s not commercial ready.
And then we’ve shifted and focused on creating products that are commercially ready.
And today, our printers, cost-wise, the printer itself, is something that is non-material to players that want to purchase it.
And the output of the printer, the product that it prints, they’re also competitive compared to the other products in this sector.
So, I think that the key point right now is that we’ve shown that we have the technology.
We already engage with different players locally and globally.
We’ve announced an agreement that we have in the UAE.
We announced a collaboration that we have in Taiwan.
We announced a collaboration that we have in Singapore.
And as I said, our main focus right now is to try to engage with an international player.
It can be anywhere in the world, but I’m saying that Europe for sure is interesting because you have countries like the Netherlands, Germany, which are very advanced in all the relevant criteria of alternative proteins.
And our main investor base is in the United States.
So, just that fact alone drives us to engage with a significant player there also.”
Arik Kaufman is completely positive that Steakholder Foods (NASDAQ: STKH) products will succeed.
“I want investors to know that since Steakholder was founded, we have always concentrated on developing unique products that are patent-protected and with an aim to scale these products. Not concept products, but we always wanted to create something that is tangible, that is commercial-ready. And I think that we’ve reached that point after all these years.
A lot of funds were invested in it, a lot of manpower. But we are there. So, I think that the stage that we’ve reached right now is very interesting. It’s like a transformation from research and development to commercialization.
We have a few agreements here in Israel that we’ve announced. We are working very hard to secure international agreements. And I hope that once the products are out there, it will be a very exciting moment for us. And once the customers begin to taste these products and they see that there are no products like these products out there, I hope that the sky’s the limit.”
The entire 2,929 word interview is available exclusively at the Wall Street Transcript.
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