US-based animal-free dairy company Perfect Day is evaluating the option to sell parts of consumer business The Urgent Company (TUC) to focus on B2B ingredient sales.
The company said it will direct all its investments to its biology innovation and food-tech arm Nth Bio and its manufacturing capacity in the upcoming years.
Perfect Day said that it is aiming to meet increasing global demand for its whey protein made with fermentation and the “impact potential of precision fermentation technology”.
“We felt an urgency to prioritize our partnerships and maximise capacity for upcoming priority global B2B partnerships,” a Perfect Day spokesperson told Just Food.
“We have exciting announcements with major consumer packaged goods players in the US, an expanded international footprint and manufacturing scaling to deliver on these partnerships upcoming. In addition to these B2B milestones, nth Bio will continue to leverage its technology expertise to provide external services and value to enterprise biology partners.”
The animal-free enterprise launched its B2B business in 2020 and shortly after that it established TUC, a “critical part of its category creation strategy,” to operate its own brands and accelerate category growth by “helping its B2B and retail partners generate learnings while driving consumer adoption and excitement”.
The Perfect Day spokesperson said: “The Urgent Company succeeded in doing exactly what it was created to do – ignite a new category, helping our B2B and retail partners generate learnings while driving consumer adoption and excitement.”
TUC has four divisions, the ice cream brand Coolhaus, acquired by the company from the Colorado-based Sunrise Strategic Partners in 2021, Brave Robot, Modern Kitchen and California Performance Co.
At the same time, the food manufacturer is considering moving away from “animal-free” labelling in some cases. In many instances, the company said communicating what the ingredient is, such as ‘from fermentation’, is even more compelling than communicating what the product is not.
“We work closely with our partners to determine the vocabulary that supports their goals and the needs of their consumers, and in some cases, animal-free will still work well,“ the company told Just Food. “But one of the learnings we found through The Urgent Company and our work with our partners, is there are a number of consumer needs met by our protein, notably sustainability.”
Perfect Day has also announced a new partnership with Unico Nutrition this week. It will use its protein from fermentation alongside dairy and egg products to reduce the carbon footprint of its manufacturing process.
General Mills’ innovation unit switched to Israel-based Remilk’s animal-free whey protein instead of sourcing the ingredient from Perfect Day in the US earlier in February.
Food giant Nestlé had included Perfect Day in its program to pilot a product through its newly-established US R+D Accelerator in September last year, bringing it to the US market later as a “test-and-learn”.
