Alt-Seafood Splash #4 - SeaSpire Inspires with Bioprinted Plant-Based Snapper

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Happy Tuesday Market Shakers! Who's hungry for a juicy tale about overcoming the BIGGEST challenge facing faux-fish?

Replicating fish texture has been a big blocker for the alt-seafood industry. Startup SeaSpire's patent-pending bioprinting tech promises to change this. Earlier this month, SeaSpire unveiled their plant-based snapper fish analogue, the first of its kind in the APAC region. Today their co-founder reveals his plans to hook the world with their ultra-realistic faux-fish.

Today’s post by sub-headings

• Ask me anything!

• SeaSpire’s Bioprinted Plant-Based Seafood

• The challenges of marketing alt-seafood

• Collaboration is key to expanding the alt-seafood market

• The high potential markets around the world for alt-seafood

• How to build an early market for faux-fish

• SeaSpire’s insights about entering Japan

• The Future of alt-seafood

Ask me anything!

We’re trying something new. Our interviewee is Varun Gadodia, the co-founder of SeaSpire. He will be answering your questions until the end of this week!

Please send us your questions! If you are inspired with a question while reading today’s article, please hit “reply” and send it to us in an email.

Varun is an expert in all things alt-seafood, bio-printing, and alt-proteins in APAC. Whatever your question, big or small, send it on and we’ll do our best to answer.

We’ll publish the questions we receive and Varun’s answers to them next week*. Please submit any questions by Sunday, June 26th.

*If we get a high volume of questions, please understand we may not be able to answer them all.

SeaSpire's Bioprinted Plant-Based Seafood

In 2021 Varun Gadodia co-founded SeaSpire. His mission was to conquer the emerging alt-seafood industry's Moby-Dick.

SeaSpire aspires to fill a "white space" in the alt-seafood market. Replicating the whole-muscle structure of fish using plant-based ingredients.

SeaSpire’s tech 3D prints whole muscle structures using clean-label plant-based feedstock.

Companies have been working on replicating the muscle structure of meat for a decade. And they only have to replicate one type of structure. Beef for example, or chicken. The muscle structure of fish differs by species. And no one has nailed the major white-fish and crustacean varieties like snapper, prawn or lobsters yet in a scalable way. That's where our bioprinting technology comes in. Using a cartridge of plant-based feedstock we can "print" realistic whole-cut fish.

We’re focussing on alt-snapper, white meat seafood that’s popular in Asia-pacific. We have lobster tail, crayfish and prawns in our pipeline. But first, we want to get one species done well and scale it before moving to another seafood product.

SeaSpire's vision is more than near-perfect fish texture. They're also aiming for distributed manufacturing.

Our vision is that supermarkets can manufacture our product on-site. In a storeroom for example.

Our tech's strong point is that it will localize food production. It uses little water and takes up little space. It takes different types of feedstock so we can use local ingredients. It’s more flexible than extrusion-based production which usually focuses on one type of product.

With tech this promising, it should be smooth sailing to market entry, right? But as Varun reveals, the alt-seas can be treacherous.

Like what you’re reading today?

Marketing Alt-Seafood is a challenge

SeaSpire is currently about a year away from commercialization. As much as scaling the tech is key, Varun is also focussing on the marketing of his products.

We’ve known for years that red meats aren’t good for us. But seafood is something consumers know is healthy. So it’s difficult to convince them to consume alt-seafood for health reasons. The sustainability route is promising but it's not a priority for all consumers.

We realize that millennials and gen-z are high potential markets. Younger generations are more sustainability-conscious. They also have time to adopt alt-seafood as a normal part of their diets in their youth. The promise of authentic texture is enough to get them to bite and stay hooked.

When marketing products across regions, localization is key. From country to country, region to region, the type of fish consumed differs. There’s also culture to consider when it comes to seafood. From fish and chips to sushi, every nation enjoys seafood differently.

This is where our distributed manufacturing model will reap rewards. We will manufacture our products using local ingredients. Of course, we will centralize the production of some core ingredients in India, China and New Zealand. But we want to cut inefficiencies in our supply chain as much as possible. The more local ingredients we can use, the better for everyone. We want to brand our products as using “locally-sourced” ingredients. People like consuming their regional produce/provenance.

Strategic marketing alone won't be enough to develop a market for alt-seafood. For SeaSpire, expanding the size of the alt-fish pie is also essential

We must expand the Alt-Seafood market together

Right now, consumer demand for faux-fish is low; companies need to create a market for it at first. Collaboration is the key to this, according to Varun.

We’re starting from a zero-base with alt-seafood. There isn’t a market that we can scale into right now. That’s why we want to defend our position in the market by offering a solution, not competition. In the future, we want to partner with the leading alt-seafood companies. Most companies right now are producing a product formula, a slurry if you will. This is compatible with our technology. Other companies can use their formula in our bioprinting technology. By helping a company like Shiok Meats to grow, we will expand the whole market for alt-seafood.

The story of alt-seafood so far, especially cultivated, is about collaboration, not competition. Shiok Meats and Integriculture have partnered to help realize cultured shrimp. Germany's Bluu Seafood partnered with China's CellX to meet demand for sustainable proteins. SeaSpire wants to use their innovative bioprinting technology to further expand the ecosystem.

The high potential markets for faux-fish

Besides collaboration, we asked Varun for his predictions about the future of alt-seafood.

Everyone’s excited about cultured seafood. Companies like WildType and Blue Nalu are in great positions to scale. But regulation is a blocker. Regulating cultured products will have a ripple-effect on the whole alt-seafood market.

Varun emphasises that certain regions are positioning themselves to lead the faux-fish market.

There are two regions I’m really excited about creating a wave of growth in alternative

seafood.

Singapore is aiming for food self-sufficiency. Their drive is already seeing great results for regulations around alt-protein.

Then there’s the UAE. Seafood consumption in the region is growing but they’re water scarce. Alt-seafood is appealing because it requires much less water than fresh fish. They've already shown they're open to investing in tech. The UAE has strong smart city infrastructure for example. This sends a message to startups, including food techs, that they're ready to support them.

Varun is planning to launch SeaSpire’s products in the UAE, Singapore, New Zealand and India at first. SeaSpire has been doing its R&D in New Zealand but is busy setting up a fully-operational base in India. Varun explains India is a strategically significant market for expanding in APAC, and also a promising market for alt-proteins.

He also sees potential in China, but down the line. 

China grows fast. Once they realize the potential for alt-seafoods their growth will be astronomical. This has been their pattern so far.

Building the early market for alt-seafood

Despite growing investment in alternative seafood, there are still technological hurdles to overcome.

We need more R&D across alt-seafood categories. Take cultured seafood. Right now, most companies are focussing on salmon cell lines because it’s the most in-demand fish. When we try to culture other varieties, we will need different feedstocks. This is tough to develop. I predict big players will expand horizontally once they nail their core product. Shiok Meats for example could move from shrimp to scallops.

Varun recognized this before he founded SeaSpire.

Focussing on bio-printing is very strategic for us. It's not just about improving the texture of plant-based fish. We realized even cultured players haven’t figured out whole muscle structures. If we figure that out, other companies don't have to. We can be the final step in their commercialization. And we can help them to produce different kinds of seafood structures.

Varun sees early opportunities beyond whole-cuts in the plant-based category too.

We want to pick the low-hanging fruit and begin establishing a market for alt-seafood. Products like battered fish or scampi are popular and they don't need the same level of fidelity. Especially in New Zealand for example, where we have our R&D base, most people eat fish and chips. We can’t ignore local preferences and plan to create early products that cater to them.

In Japan, the focus is on tech

When it comes to Japan, Varun is realistic.

To be real, the ocean will run dry of fish before Japan considers giving them up for alternatives. That said, we see a lot of interest in alt-products from big players. Mitsubishi has formed strategic partnerships with Blue Nalu for example. The higher fidelity products will crack the market in Japan. That's why we don't want to compete with our plant-based products.  We can support the development of a market for alt-seafood by supporting local players with our bio-printing tech.

SeaSpire's approach for Japan is to leave product development to the locals. Instead, they can help the category grow by offering their technology as a solution.

The future of alt-seafood

SeaSpire’s technology is still in the pilot stage. With a year until the commercialization of their plant-based whole cuts, Varun is busy prepairing.

Over the next year, we will work on pilot studies for our products. We’re planning on testing them in India, the UAE and New Zealand at first.

SeaSpire does its R&D in New Zealand, where Varun is a food researcher. He’s keen to leverage Aotearoa New Zealand’s strong brand as a legacy protein producer.

New Zealand has a reputation for environmentally friendly production. We want to leverage this to support the strengths of our brand. This could mean launching premium plant-based seafood, sustainably produced with clean-label feedstock. 

In the long run, SeaSpire also intends to take the sustainability of their product a step further.

Right now we're working with commercially available feedstock. In the future we want to create our own sustainable alternative. We plan to develop feedstocks that valorize waste materials to create our products. There are opportunities to experiment with feedstocks that use waste plant-based ingredients.

Talking to Varun, it's clear that the alt-seafood space is emerging, but it's an ocean of opportunity. There's a growing ecosystem of innovators and investors seeking to capitalize on them. Our chips are on more collaboration as the key to alt-fish emerging as a market.

That's all folks

We hope you learned as much as we did from this insight-packed interview. We’d like to say a huge thank you to Varun and the SeaSpire team for taking the time out to do this interview.

We’ll see you next week for another interesting interview with the company pioneering plant-based sashimi in Japan.

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