Alternative fats and oils developers, Nourish Ingredients are a team of world-class Aussie scientists, with a shared vision to make plant-based meat and dairy alternatives even better. Nourish was founded in 2019 by former CSIRO scientists Dr James Petrie and Dr Ben Leita. The Nourish team joined the CEAT Innovation Hub in early 2021, and have continued to grow in size and capability since then.
In March 2021 it was announced that Nourish had secured $14.4 (AU) million in a seed round led by Horizons and the Australian government’s Main Sequence Ventures. The funding has enabled Nourish to work on commercialising several alternative fat lipids they are testing. Securing this funding was a major milestone, highlighting Nourish’s incredible progress and development, especially considering the business is less than two years old.
In addition to accelerating R&D activities within a short period of time, since joining the CEAT Hub, Nourish have also grown in several critical ways. The latest big achievement for Nourish has been the move to an additional site in Mitchell (ACT), where they have moved into small-scale production.
With 5 staff based permanently at the Hub, an additional 4 making regular use of the hot desks and 8 in the Mitchell facility, Nourish comprise a large part of the Hub, and are a vibrant addition to the Hub community.
We asked the Nourish team what they felt were the benefits of working out of the Hub – here is what they said “The Hub’s location within ANU gives us proximity to leading research and world-class facilities. These have helped us build our current Synbio, Analytical and fermentation capabilities with minimum budget”. While building their capabilities since joining the Hub, Nourish have also fostered relationships within the ANU community, and are exploring Linkage grants with ANU teams and ANU-based consultancies.
As part of the Hub, Nourish have taken part in a number of CEAT events, with their Chief Technical Officer, Dr Anna El Tahchy presenting at several events over the last few months, including the Food in the Capital Peri-Urban tour visit to CEAT and the International Business Connect event in August 2021. The events Anna has presented at have helped build Nourish’s visibility within the local and regional community and showcased the exceptional level of work that is undertaken by Hub members within the ANU-CSIRO Precinct.
Nourish has an excellent team of researchers made up of experts in synthetic biology, technology, fermentation, analysis and project management. As Chief Technical Officer, the significant value of Anna’s work with Nourish has been publically recognised, as she has been honoured by the VWS x Impossible Foods Vegan Women Summit as well as awarded the ICM AgriFood Award for innovations in agri-tech. You can learn more about this highly-skilled and diverse team here.
Having already achieved many accolades, CEAT are excited to see what is next for Nourish and looks forward seeing them show the world how Nourish fats and oils can take the taste of plant-based products to the next level.