The Bland Company, a startup that turns underused plant feedstocks into functional food ingredients, has raised £2 million in a pre-seed round led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Entrepreneurs First, Transpose Platform, Behind Genius Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and Vento. It develops ingredients designed to replace eggs in baked goods, condiments, and confectionery, and will use the funding to grow its team and accelerate development of its protein functionalisation platform.
Eggs are everywhere in the food system: one third of all eggs are used in food manufacturing. They’re broken down to enable the production of baked goods, sauces, confectionery, snacks, and prepared foods. They are also a procurement nightmare. Egg prices swing wildly due to avian flu outbreaks, cage-free regulation rollouts, demand seasonality, climate shocks, and feed costs. In the past 18 months alone, prices have fluctuated by 2–3x, forcing manufacturers to constantly reformulate and re-forecast. And yet, there’s no real alternative.
The Bland Company produces functional proteins from agricultural side streams using a proprietary biochemical process that integrates with existing equipment, allowing manufacturers to achieve similar texture and performance without the supply risk. The platform converts agricultural side streams into proteins that can foam, bind, emulsify, and remain highly soluble. It is feedstock agnostic, allowing adaptation to different abundant plant inputs while maintaining cost efficiency by using overlooked raw materials and established infrastructure.
Yash Khandelwal previously built next-generation ingredients, launched a watermelon-seed cheese product, and scaled bioprocesses at Better Dairy in the United Kingdom. Micol Hafez studied biochemistry and bioengineering and previously built a personalised nutrition platform focused on food science and product development.
The funding will be used to hire scientists and engineers to support development of its protein chemistry and application science capabilities. The Bland Company is working with food companies to run trials, validate the performance of its first solution, and identify initial commercial applications. Its long-term goal is to build a technology platform that transforms overlooked plant side streams into a new class of functional proteins.
